Students and postdoctoral researchers are critical to the ongoing success and advancement of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The department awards recognize the outstanding contributions made by our dedicated student researchers, highlighting the lasting impact they are making to both academia and the field at large.
Each year during the spring semester, nominations are accepted to recognize the empowering work of our students. The categories include: Best M.S. Thesis Award, Best Ph.D. Thesis Award, Best Paper Graduate Student Award, Best Paper Post-Doc Award, Excellence in Outreach Award, Outstanding Teacher Award and Entrepreneurship Award.
In order to be considered, nominees must submit nomination forms, accompanied by a letter of support from the nominator. After careful review, nominees are selected by the awards committee and announced at a celebration.
Below are the 2019 award recipients:
Best M.S. Thesis Award - This award was split between two students:
Joshua Hope, "Electrochemical Evaluation of Self-Healing Epoxy Coated Rebar in Simulated Concrete Pore Solution"
Reece Goldsberry, "Electrochemical Evaluation of Self-Healing Epoxy Coated Rebar in Simulated Concrete Pore Solution"
Best Ph.D. Thesis Award
Pejman Honarmandi, "Materials Design Under Bayesian Uncertainty Quantification"
Best Paper Graduate Student Award - This award was split between two students:
Behrouz Haghgouyan, "Fracture Toughness of NiTieTowards Establishing Standard Test Methods for Phase Transforming Materials"
Yupeng Zhang, "Identification of Plastic Properties From Conical Indentation Using a Bayesian - Type Statistical Approach"
Excellence in Outreach Award - This award was split between two students:
Hanna Hlushko was recognized for her work with Women in Materials Science, leading a team of undergraduates under the Aggie Research Leadership Program to work with her in the lab, volunteering as a moderator to facilitate the discussion at a workshop for graduate students titled Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers and many other outreach activities.
Arash Shadravan was recognized for serving as the president of NACEstudent chapter, initiating the NACEIndustry Lecture Series, and executed the first Corrosion and Materials Reliability Symposium at the RELLIS campus.
Outstanding Teacher Award - This award was split amongst several students:
The following students were awarded for developing lab experiments and instructions for the new 301 MSEN course, Unified Materials Lab I: Adwait Gaikwad, Wahaz Nasim, Oscar Huang, Jahanzaib Malik and Evan Prehn
Dimitrios Loufakis was recognized for serving as the teaching assistant for MSEN 201, Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering.
Entrepreneurship Award
Jaylen James was recognized for his participation in the Aggies Invent competition in 2017, his involvement in the Entrepreneurship in Chile study abroad trip and his team’s startup Xplosion Technology winning the speed pitch competition at South by Southwest in March, among other endeavors.