Students shine in 2024 Student Excellence Awards

one man and two women who study undergraduate industrial engineering stand together holding awards.

Two student organizations and two students from the College took home awards given as part of the Student Excellence Awards on April 29. The awards, sponsored by the UWM Student Leadership Programs, honored 20 individuals and six organizations.

The Society of Women Engineers was recognized with the “Community Impact of the Year” award, which is presented to an organization that has created a positive, measurable impact on our campus and/or community and embodies UWM’s values. Sydney Block, SWE president, accepted the award.

The National Society of Black Engineers shared the “Outstanding Student Organization Award” with the Student Social Work Association, which is given to an organization that has exhibited a high commitment to improving campus life at UWM. The organization will have shown unity within membership and produced strong programming. Kalen Walker, NSBE Milwaukee chapter president, accepted the award.

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Sreeteja Tummala (left) and Abhiroop Reddy Tokala

Both the individual awards were shared.

Sreeteja Tummala, computer science, shared the “Outstanding Graduate Student Award” with Aubrie Gorski, kinesiology. Abhiroop Reddy Tokala, biomedical engineering, was named “Outstanding Undergraduate Student” with Drew Skyberg, business.

These awards are presented to students who have exhibited a strong commitment to UWM in multiple areas of campus life. They are recognized for their academic excellence, leadership and contributions to their community.

Happy 50th anniversary to Mr. Kahn!

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About 60 people attended a surprise party May 2 for Iftekharuddin Khan in honor of his 50th anniversary of teaching as an adjunct at the College. He has continuously taught part-time at UWM after earning his master’s degree in industrial engineering from UWM in 1974.

Khan was greeting by faculty, staff, students, family and friends, who spoke fondly about him and his influence on the College, including the following from the industrial engineering department: Chair Jaejin Jang; Rina Ghose, professor; Hamid Sefoddini, associate professor; Wilkistar Otieno, associate professor; and Matthew Petering, associate professor.

Others speaking were Professors Pradeep Rohatgi and Kishna Pillai, both materials engineering, and teaching faculty Dan Beller, who years ago had been a student of Khan’s. Associate deans Andy Graettinger and Prasenjit Guptasarma also paid tribute.

No plans to retire are in the works, Khan said.

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Was it really a surprise? Khan said he suspected something when someone in the hallway wished him a happy 50th birthday! Close enough. He is pictured here with Jaejin Jang, chair of industrial engineering (left).
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Hamid Seifoddini (center), associate professor, industrial engineering, shares a memory of meeting Khan for the first time.
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Madiha Ahmed (left), teaching faculty, industrial engineering, planned the party, which included a poster board with messages from well-wishers.
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A portion of the group who attended the event surround Khan and Pounce (second row from top).

Outstanding Presentation Awards at UWM Undergraduate Research Symposium

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Hats off to five students from the College who were recognized with Outstanding Presentation Awards at the annual campuswide Undergraduate Research Symposium held April 26.

Sponsored by the UWM Office of Undergraduate Research, the event was an academic year-end celebration of 250 UWM students, mentored by over 130 of UWM’s faculty and research staff. The OUR brings students looking for on-campus research opportunities together with faculty mentors who have positions.  

These students were among the 22 ribbon-winners:

Madisyn Adelman. Mentor: Jacob Rammer, biomedical engineering. Comprehensive Assessment of Community Mobility and Participation of Wheelchair Users Using Wearables.”

Anna Lutz. Mentor: Rani El Hajjar, civil & environmental engineering. “Strength Analysis of Additively Manufactured Sandwich Composite Inserts.”

David Marsella. Mentor: William Musinski, materials science & engineering. “High-Temperature Oxidation Comparison of Additively Manufactured NiCoCr Alloys.”

Emlyn Swardenski. Mentor: Priyatha Premnath, biomedical engineering. “Segmentation of Blood Vessels in a Murine Fracture Callus.”

William Zickler. Mentor: Jerald Thomas, computer science. “The Development of Augmented Reality Software for Controlling and Observing Robotics.”

Nearly 100 submissions to the 2024 Student Research Poster Competition & Experiential Learning Expo

three individual head shots. Two men, one woman

Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Student Research Poster Competition and their faculty advisors. This year’s event was expanded and its name changed to the Student Research Poster Competition & Experiential Learning Expo to include a poster session for those who had experiential learning opportunities, such as internships, co-ops, study abroad or work with student organizations.  

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The energy was high in both the research poster competition side of the event and also the experiential learning expo side.
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UWM Chancellor Mark Mone stopped by to greet students, alums and judges.
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Makayla Lawrence explains her experience as an intern at Rockwell Automation to judge Nicaise Mbunteu, a mechanical engineer from Baxter.
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Sarath Chandra Pratapagiri, graduate student in computer science, displays his work with judge and assistant professor Shideh Yavary Mehr.
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A group including senior Carol Martinez (from left), foundry lab manager Swaroop Kumar Behera, and junior Alec Buhler demonstrated metal-casting for UWM Provost Andrew Daire and Professor Pradeep Rohatgi (far right).
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Seyed Faridedin Rafie, materials science & engineering, explains his work to a judge at the research poster competition. Rafie placed first in the graduate category.
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Morgan Suzanne Connaughton, a graduate student in biomedical engineering, banters with one of the judges. Her poster explains her use of computer simulations to understand how malignant breast tissue behaves under normal physiological conditions in the body. The work can help improve medical treatments and diagnoses.
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David Marsella, undergraduate in materials science & engineering, talks with one of the judges about his poster. Marsella also competed in the UWM Undergraduate Research Symposium, in which he and four other engineering students won Outstanding Presentation Awards.
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Judge Mark Juds talks with Grace Oluwaseun Fasipe, a grad student in biomedical engineering about the student organization REHAB.
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Chayank Pawar, mechanical engineering, and friends discuss the senior design project Pawar is working on. The team made a working prototype that cleans resin off the 3D printed parts created in figure 4 modular printers. The work was done for sponsor Engman Taylor.

All together, 99 students participated, with 70 research posters backed by 42 faculty advisors, both up from last year. Of the 70 posters, 21 were from undergraduates.

There were 29 new submissions on the experiential learning portion, included 19 co-ops/internships, four senior design projects, five student orgs, and one study abroad experience.

Sixty-eight volunteered as judges, including industry employees, alums, and 14 faculty members from the college. A thank-you also goes out to the eight sponsors and 25 students and staff members who supported or helped to stage this event.

Graduate Awards

First Place: Seyed Faridedin Rafie, Materials Science & Engineering
Advisor: Nidal Abu-Zahra, Associate Professor, Materials Science & Engineering

Second Place: Zayeed Bin Mamun, Mechanical Engineering
Advisor: Roshan D’Souza, Associate Professor and Richard and Joanne Grigg Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Third Place: Kada Kada, Mechanical Engineering
Advisor: Ryoichi Amano, Professor and Joanne Grigg Faculty Fellow, Mechanical Engineering

Michael Krauski Memorial Award

Hamza Alnawafah, Mechanical Engineering
Advisor: Ryoichi Amano, Professor and Joanne Grigg Faculty Fellow, Mechanical Engineering

Undergraduate Awards

First Place: Cameron Lee, Data Science
Advisor: Inga Wang (Associate Professor, School of Rehabilitation Sciences & Technology)

Second Place: Nicholas Birschbach, Electrical Engineering
Advisor: Shuaiqi Shen, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering

Third Place: Anna Lutz, Mechanical Engineering
Advisor: Rani El Hajjar, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering

Martinez wins first prize in national foundry research competition

Two men and one woman smiling at the camera.

For the second year in a row, a UWM engineering undergraduate earned first prize at a national competition showcasing original metal-casting research. Carol Martinez, a senior in materials science & engineering, took the top prize at the International Journal of Metal-Casting’s Foundry Education Foundation Student Research Competition, part of the American Foundry Society’s Metal-Casting Congress, held in Milwaukee on April 24.

The conference brought together professionals from around the world to explore the latest trends and advancements shaping the metal-casting industry.

Martinez’s research poster described a project in which she modified the surface of brass, using sand casting with a mixture of alloys that improved the brass’ corrosion resistance in water distribution systems.

She received a cash prize of about $2,500 and her paper on the work will be published in the International Journal of Metal-Casting.

Martinez began working on this project in last summer with support from the Support for Undergraduate Research Fellows (SURF). Additional funding came from UWM’s Water, Equipment and Policy research center. The research was conducted under the supervision of graduate research assistants Swaroop Behera, Kaustubh Rane, Omid Ghaderi, Mehran Zare, and faculty members Pradeep Rohatgi and Benjamin Church.

Last year, Jenna Van Hoogstraten, mechanical engineering, took home the top prize when the competition was held in Cleveland, Ohio.

More accolades for alum Satya Nadella

Time magazine has named Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella (’90 MS computer science) one of its 100 Most Influential People of 2024. For the magazine’s special 2024 Time100 issue, other leaders in an awardee’s field write about them in a short essay.

Nadella’s essayist is Mellody Hobson, co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments, who knows Nadella. She writes of him: “There’s rightful concern about unintended consequences and misuse [of AI]. That’s why it’s so reassuring that Satya is one of AI’s stewards. His thoughtfulness and humility should make us safer.”

The laurels are piling up for Nadella. In January, CNN Business chose him as its CEO of the Year for 2023, and in July last year, Time put Microsoft on its list of the 100 most influential companies of 2023. More

Slavens lab hosts National Biomechanics Day at UWM

African American teen wearing a hajib works with exercise equipment in a lab that researches occupational biomechanics.

For the second year, Brooke Slavens, professor, mechanical engineering, and her lab members celebrated National Biomechanics Day, April 19, by hosting an event for 30 Milwaukee Public Schools high school students.

Participants joined in hands-on activities to explore motion analysis, strength and balance. Lab members included researcher Anthony Nguyen; Caleb Cordes, PhD student, health sciences; and Brian Patterson, master’s student, industrial engineering. Undergraduate SURF students Jake Siong, biomedical engineering, and Matthew Van De Wege, kinesiology, also assisted. (Photos by Chris Beimborn.)

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MPS high school students from Golda Meir School, who are enrolled in a Project Lead the Way class, visited Professor Brooke Slavens’ Mobility Lab at the Innovation Accelerator building.
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MPS students attach small reflective markers to their clothing for one demonstration. The markers show up on the computer screen at particular landmarks on the body.
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Brooke Slavens (left) leads the group through movements that the computer program tracks by picking up on the location of the reflective markers on their clothes. Using this, the group could compare different walking and jumping patterns.
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Lab member Brian Patterson (left) explains BTE Primus RS equipment, a rehabilitation machine that uses a gear system to emulate resistance. Here, the BTE is employed to look at the power generated by a participant’s baseball swing. The green bar on the screen indicates the power output behind the swing.
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A high school student comes “up to bat” using the BTE Primus RS equipment.
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A high school student comes “up to bat” using the BTE Primus RS equipment.

Sung receives a $547,700 NIH grant to develop a next-generation, microscopic nuclear imaging technique

man looking at camera

Nuclear imaging, such as positron emission tomography (PET), provides superior sensitivity and specificity. That is why PET is widely used in hospitals to detect and stage different types of cancers in the body.

However, the resolution of PET images is limited. 

To overcome this, a group at Stanford University has developed a novel technique called radioluminescence microscopy (RLM) that also uses radioisotopes as tracers. But RLM can provide much higher resolution by directly detecting positrons, particles emitted by the radioisotopes, instead of annihilation gamma rays produced by the positrons.

RLM is the only technique that can measure the distribution of radioisotope uptake among single living cells, and it has led to many important discoveries.

The resolution of RLM, however, quickly drops as the sample thickness increases, which is common to microscopic imaging techniques detecting positrons. “That leaves scientists with no microscopic nuclear imaging technique with depth-resolving capability,” said Yongjin Sung, associate professor, mechanical and biomedical engineering.

Sung and his colleagues have been awarded a $547,700 grant from the National Institutes of Health to add the depth dimension to RLM.

Ultra-quick and ultra-tiny

In this grant, Sung is collaborating with Guillem Pratx, a professor at Stanford University who has pioneered advances in RLM, and Youngho Seo and Grant Gullberg, professors at the University of California-San Francisco who are PET imaging experts.

The idea enabling the innovation is to capture the 3D shapes of positron trails and track the positrons back to the radiotracers.

“The task is similar to taking a 3D picture of lightning at a microscopic scale,” Sung said.

“The positron trails disappear within tens of microseconds. However, using a method called snapshot optical tomography, we can capture their 3D shapes with a single snapshot.”

Living cells from a specific patient

RLM imaging takes place outside the human body and can be applied to the cells taken from a specific patient.

“With RLM, we can test all different types of radiopharmaceuticals and find the best therapy for that individual patient,” Sung said.

With the improved resolution and depth-sectioning capability, he said, the 3D RLM technique will open new doors to microscopic nuclear imaging and allow for testing new radiotracers using living, multi-cellular organisms before translating to small animals and human patients.

Five students inducted into Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society

A group of 4 men and 3 women

Congratulations to the following students from the College who were initiated into Tau Beta Pi, the Engineering Honor Society: 

  • Cameron Abbey
  • Katherine Behlke
  • Byron Edwards
  • Shauna Gropp
  • Aurora Hope  

The UWM Chapter of Tau Bet Pi, Wisconsin Gamma, held its joint initiation ceremony with Marquette University and Milwaukee School of Engineering on Sunday, April 21.

Officers elected include Abhi Tokala, President; Elijah Jordan-Kruse, Vice-President; Kevin Monahan, Secretary; Joseph Netteshein and Grant Woodruff, Treasurer. The faculty advisor is Professor Kevin J. Renken.

Tau Beta Pi is the only engineering honor society representing the entire engineering profession. It is the nation’s second-oldest honor society, established to recognize student and alumni accomplishment in the field of engineering.

Undergraduate students in the top eighth of their engineering class in their next-to-last year or in the top fifth of their engineering class in their last college year are eligible for membership. Engineering graduate students in the top fifth of their class or whose high-quality work is attested to by a faculty member may be elected to membership.

Two alums honored in their work on behalf of sustainability by U.S. DOE

head shots of a woman, left and a man, right

Farah Nourin (’22 PhD, mechanical engineering) and Ahmad Abbas (’20 PhD, mechanical engineering) were among those recognized for outstanding achievement in energy engineering with an Industrial Assessment Center Alumni Award. 

While working on their degrees at UWM, Nourin and Abbas were members of UWM Department of Energy-sponsored Industrial Assessment Center (IAC), one of 37 around the U.S. They conducted energy assessments for small and medium-sized manufacturing plants to help companies increase efficiency and save money.

This award was established to recognize former IAC personnel for their outstanding accomplishments in promoting the practices and principles of energy engineering. 

Nourin is now working for Eaton Corporation as a senior product engineer. Abbas is currently senior manager for energy & sustainability with Walmart.