The winners of the 2019-20 Fitch H. Beach Award for Outstanding Research and for the Outstanding Graduate Student awards in each academic program in the College of Engineering have been announced.
See a Celebration video honoring the top award winners.
2019-20 Fitch H. Beach Award for Outstanding Doctoral Research
This endowed award, established by Janet M. Beatty in honor of her uncle, recognizes the most outstanding graduate researchers within the College of Engineering.
Each department nominates one PhD student, and awardees receive stipends, a certificate, and a medal. Honorees are:
• Cort Thompson, Adviser: Erin Purcell, Biomedical Engineering
• Juan Sebastian Hernandez-Suarez, Adviser: Pouyan Nejadhashemi, Biosystems & Agricultural Engineering
• Chenchen Yang, Adviser: Richard Lunt, Chemical Engineering & Materials Science
• Vahid Morovati, Adviser: Roozbeh Dargazany, Civil & Environmental Engineering
• Ryan LaRose, Adviser: Matt Hirn, Computational Mathematics, Science & Engineering
• Joshua Engelsma, Adviser: Anil Jain, Computer Science & Engineering
• Dhrubajit Chowdury, Adviser: Hassan Khalil, Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Mehdi Samiee, Adviser: Mohsen Zayernouri, Mechanical Engineering
2019-20 Outstanding Graduate Students
This award recognizes the most outstanding graduate student in each program, as selected by the faculty within the department. Recipients receive a stipend, certificate, and a medal.
• Victoria Toomajian, Biomedical Engineering (Adviser: Chris Contag)
• Kaitlyn Casulli, Biosystems Engineering (Adviser: Kirk Dolan)
• Kanchan Chavan, Chemical Engineering (Adviser: Scott Calabrese-Barton)
• Ramin Saedi, Civil Engineering (Adviser: Ali Zockaie)
• Robert Termuhlen, Computational Mathematics, Science & Engineering (Adviser: Hui-Chia Yu)
• Yao Ma, Computer Science (Adviser: Jiliang Tang)
• Asif Iqbal, Electrical Engineering (Adviser: Peng Zhang)
• Vidhya Ramalingam, Environmental Engineering (Adviser: Alison Cupples)
• Chelsea Weiskerger, Environmental Engineering (Adviser: Phanikumar Mantha)
• Yubo Zhang, Materials Science (Adviser: Jason Nicholas)
• Nilay Kant, Mechanical Engineering (Adviser: Ranjan Mukherjee)
Awards are usually presented each spring during the annual Engineering Graduate Research Symposium in MSU's Breslin Center, which was canceled this spring due to the Novel Coronavirus.