March 30, 2018
Almost 300 poster presentations highlight this year’s celebration of graduate student research
The 2018 Engineering Graduate Research Symposium at Michigan State University showcased almost 300 poster
presentations and celebrated both the Outstanding Graduate Student Awards and the Fitch H. Beach Award nominees during ceremonies Thursday, March 29, at the Breslin Center.
It also offered a chance for the College of Engineering to thank Associate Dean Manooch Koochesfahani for his 10 years of service to graduate students as he steps away from that leadership position to focus on his academic and research roles.
Engineering Dean Leo Kempel offered the welcome during the seventh annual Engineering Graduate Research Symposium. Thomas D. Jeitschko, associate provost for graduate education and dean of the MSU Graduate School, also offered remarks.
The event included presentations by the nominees for the Fitch H. Beach Award for outstanding graduate student research. Awards are based on a review of students’ academic and professional records and on an oral presentation of their research. Nominees receive a stipend, certificate, and a medal to be worn at graduation.
Xi Yin, a PhD student in computer science and engineering (CSE), won the 2018 Fitch H. Beach Award for her biometrics research on "Feature Transfer Learning for Deep Face Recognition with Long-Tail Data." Her advisor is CSE assistant professor Xiaoming Liu.
Other nominees for the 2018 Fitch H. Beach Award were:
Matthew Ryan Herman, Biosystems Engineering, Advisor: Pouyan Nejadhashemi;
Christine James, Chemical Engineering, Advisor: Yue Qi;
Hassene Hasni, Civil Engineering, Advisor: Nizar Lajnef;
Gautham Dharuman, CMSE, Advisor: Michael Murillo;
Jinshui Miao, Electrical Engineering, Advisor: Chuan Wang; and
Aryan Mehboudi, Mechanical Engineering, Advisor: Junghoon Yeom.
Abstracts for Fitch H. Beach Award research
Outstanding Graduate Student Awards were presented to recognize the most outstanding graduate student in each program, as selected by the department faculty. Recipients receive a stipend, certificate, and a medal to be worn at graduation.
The honorees were:
Ankit Agrawal, Civil Engineering, Advisor: Venkatesh Kodur;
Sayli Bote, Chemical Engineering, Advisor: Ramani Narayan;
Anand Chandrasekhar, Electrical Engineering, Advisor: Ramakrishna Mukkamala;
Michael Crockatt, Computational Mathematics, Science & Engineering, Advisor: Andrew Christlieb;
Zachary Curtis, Environmental Engineering, Advisor: Shu-Guang Li;
Joshua Drost, Engineering Mechanics, Advisor: Tamara Reid Bush;
Yuanchao Liu, Materials Science, Advisor: Scott Calabrese Barton;
Yuzhen Lu, Biosystems Engineering, Advisor: Renfu Lu;
Joseph Salatino, Biomedical Engineering, Advisor: Erin Purcell;
Ruitao Song, Mechanical Engineering, Advisor: Guoming [George] Zhu; and
Xi Yin, Computer Science, Advisor: Xiaoming Liu.
