The outstanding community-supporting and research efforts of two College of Engineering & Applied Science faculty members were honored at the UWM Fall Awards ceremony Oct. 25 at the Zelazo Center.
UWM Distinguished Public Service Award to Ilya Avdeev
Ilya Avdeev, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, is director of innovation at the Lubar Entrepreneurship Center and cofounder of the I-Corps Site of Southeastern Wisconsin. He builds pathways for students, alumni and community members to engage in entrepreneurship.
He also uses his expertise in design thinking to spur innovation outside the boundaries of campus. The list of Avdeev’s contributions during his 14-year tenure at UWM includes his empowering Milwaukee Public School teachers become creative curriculum designers, helping neurodivergent K-12 students develop their skills and talents, and partnering with health care educators at the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Kern Institute to improve health care outcomes.
His recent collaborative work with MCW is a great example of the many community-facing projects involving critical issues that Avdeev has volunteered for or initiated. Under his leadership, more than 150 stakeholders participated in the design of a mobile clinic for underserved populations. UWM engineering students developed a full-scale clinic prototype that was used for multiple design sprints at UWM and MCW. The ideas generated will inform the build of the mobile clinic this year and next.
UWM Foundation Research Recognition Award to Roshan D’Souza
Roshan D’Souza, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, leads groundbreaking research to enhance blood flow imaging, with the ultimate goal of deepening our understanding of hemodynamics and its impact on cardiovascular diseases. His team employs cutting-edge technologies, such as physics-informed neural networks, to improve MRI-based blood flow images for clinical use.
In 2016, D’Souza shifted his focus to medical image processing for cardiologic and neurologic vascular diseases, overcoming challenges to secure $1.4 million in recent National Science Foundation grants. Since joining UWM in 2009, he has received five NSF awards and served as a vital site principal investigator for an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Furthermore, D’Souza has established collaborations with esteemed institutions, including the University of Utah, Mayo Clinic, Harvard Medical School and the Medical College of Wisconsin, augmenting his impressive achievements.
View all UWM awardees here.