Three Texas A&M University engineering students were honored at the Distinguished Graduate Student Awards ceremony April 25. The students honored were Trevor Jon Terrill (mechanical engineering), Jaskirat Singh Batra (electrical and computer engineering); and Zhaokai Meng (biomedical engineering).
Trevor Jon Terrill
A doctoral student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Terrill is focusing his dissertation on automating and improving the diagnosis of energy efficiency recommendations in manufacturing facilities.
Terrill attended Brigham Young University, graduating Summa Cum Laude in 2012. While earning his bachelor’s degree, he worked at the Idaho National Laboratory as a research intern.
While obtaining his master’s degree, Terrill completed a long-term energy study to characterize best practices for energy efficiency in religious facilities. From that research, Terrill was published in two journals. Terrill worked at the Texas A&M Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) and has been involved in more than 30 energy assessments.
As a result of his assessments and recommendations, manufacturing facilities have saved more than $400,000 annually. Through the IAC program, Terrill won a research grant and received the national IAC Outstanding Student of the Year award.
Terrill’s faculty advisor is Dr. Bryan Rasmussen.
Jaskirat Singh Batra
Batra is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Texas A&M, focusing his research on micro- and nano-fluidic devices, chip design labs, soft robotics and locomotives, sensors and actuators, medical and wearable electronic devices.
Batra would like to use his engineering degree, combined with his research interests, to make contributions in the field of medical technologies.
Batra earned his Master of Science in electrical engineering from Texas A&M in December 2015.
He has earned numerous academic, research and leadership awards, most notably the 2016 Buck Weirus Spirit Award and 2016 Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges. He was a nominee for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Student Fellowship in 2015.
Batra is also involved with Aggies in Science, Technology and Engineering Policy, a student organization he founded that mentors prospective Texas A&M scientists. He has participated in Grad Camp 2015 as a chair and counselor and has mentored more than 30 undergraduate students in his lab through the AggiE Challenge program and other summer research programs.
Batra’s faculty advisor is Dr. Jun Kameoka.
Zhaokai Meng
Biomedical engineering doctoral student, Zkaokai Meng, specializes in applied optics with an emphasis on its biomedical applications. Since 2011, Meng has worked as a research assistant in the Advanced Spectroscopy Laboratory directed by Dr. Vladislav V. Yakolev.
His research focuses on mapping and imaging 3-D microscopic viscoelasticity for biological samples, using optical spectroscopy. His work offers several noninvasive and reliable diagnostic tools for future life-science research and clinical practices.
Meng has authored more than 15 peer-reviewed journal articles, including 11 first-authorship, in top-tier academic journals. He has also delivered 21 presentations at different international conferences. Meng has also been invited to author a review article on Brillouin imaging, a recently emerged bio-imaging technique that has been greatly boosted by his work.