Author: Sue Hill

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management has announced the second cohort of 2022-24 Margaret A. Davidson Graduate Fellows.

PhD in Environmental Engineering candidate Kenny Larsen is among those selected.

The Davidson Fellowship offers students enrolled in a master’s or PhD program the opportunity to conduct research within a National Estuarine Research Reserve. Each two-year project employs the tenets of collaborative research, including engaging end-users, incorporating multidisciplinary perspectives and ensuring outcomes that are applicable to local coastal resource management needs and decision-making. This fellowship honors the legacy of Margaret A. Davidson, a true visionary and pioneer in the field of coastal resource management.

By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.

The National Society of Professional Surveyors Foundation has announced the 19 recipients of its 2022 scholarship awards. Three Michigan Technological University students are among them:

Congratulations to Brayden Brincks, Alex Thrasher, and Connor Welling!

According to the NSPS Foundation’s press release, the scholarships are awarded annually from funds created by various companies, professional organizations and individuals to help assist the financial needs of future geospatial professionals. Each year’s awardees are selected by NSPS Foundation and American Association for Geodetic Surveying scholarship committees based on their academic record, letters of recommendation, financial need and their introductory letter outlining their educational plans, future goals, significant activities and contributions to their school, community and the surveying profession.

By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.

Please join the Great Lakes Research Center in congratulating the Spring 2022 GLRC Student Research and Travel Grant recipients.

The GLRC student grants are intended to provide undergraduate and graduate students advised by GLRC members an opportunity to gain experience in writing competitive grants, to perform research they would not be able to attempt due to funding limitations or to travel to a professional conference to present a poster or paper about their research.

Student grants also provide seed research data for advisors to use in pursuing externally funded research support, and travel grants help amplify areas of research expertise at Michigan Tech. Funded students are expected to participate/volunteer for at least one GLRC activity during the grant period.

• Michelle Kelly, Ph.D. student — Biological Sciences
  GLRC member advisor: Amy Marcarelli
  Research proposal: “Quantifying whole-stream denitrification and nitrogen fixation with integrated modeling of N2 and O2 fluxes”
  
• John McCall, M.S. student — Biological Sciences
  GLRC member advisor: Gordon Paterson
  Research proposal: “Evaluating genotoxicity of mine tailings (“Stamp Sands”) on two game fish in a spawning reef in Lake Superior (MI)”
  
• Benjamin Reuss, M.S. student — Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  GLRC member advisor: Cory McDonald
  Research proposal: “Effects of Climate Change on Polymictic Lakes: A Case Study of Goose Lake, Marquette Co. MI”
  
• Laura Schaerer, Ph.D. student — Biological Sciences
  GLRC member advisor: Stephen Techtmann
  Research proposal: “Impact of Diversity on Resistance to Invasion in Plastic Degrading Microbial Communities”
  
• Gary Swain, M.S. student — Biological Sciences
  GLRC member advisor: Charles Kerfoot
  Research proposal: “Stamp Sand Toxicity LD50 Test using Daphnia”
  
• Tessa Tormoen, B.S. student — Biological Sciences
  GLRC member advisor: Jill Olin
  Research proposal: “Using DNA Metabarcoding to Evaluate Resource Partitioning Among Two Sympatric Tilefish”
  
• Aritra Chakrabarty, Ph.D. student — Social Sciences
  GLRC member advisor: Richelle Winkler
  Event: International Public Policy Association: Third Workshop on Public Policy
  Presentation: “Decentralized Climate Policy: Role of Community in Policy Making”
  
• Carleigh Lenard, B.S. student — Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering
  GLRC member advisor: John Lenters
  Event: Advancing Earth and Space Science, ASLO, The Oceanography Society
  Presentation: “Assessing the Accuracy of Wave-Derived Wind Velocity Data Collected by Spotter Buoys on the Great Lakes”
  
• Julia Petersen, Ph.D. student — Social Sciences
  GLRC member advisors: Nancy Langston and Richelle Winkler
  Event: Population Association of America Annual Meeting 2022
  Paper: “Pandemic Migration in Rural America” co-authored with Winkler, 
  who will present it at an oral session titled “Covid-19 in Rural America.”

GLRC Student Travel Grant applications are accepted anytime and reviewed on the last Friday of each month. Applications must be submitted at least two weeks in advance of travel.

GLRC Student Research Grant applications are accepted three times each year: November 1, March 1 and July 1.

By the Great Lakes Research Center.

Students from Michigan Tech’s Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE) were recently selected as a winning team in the Waste to Base Materials Challenge, sponsored by HeroX and NASA.

Competing against teams from around the country, the CEGE students proposed a process to treat and repurpose human waste on a crewed mission to Mars. Over many iterations, they developed a resource recovery loop that integrated anaerobic digestion and harvesting microbe-produced plastic to generate a continuous material stream from onboard resources.

The MTU team includes two undergraduate students, Kathryn Krieger and Corbin Sullivan, and two graduate students, Azmat Naseem and Brian Rivers. The team was assembled and mentored by Audra Morse (CEGE).

By Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering.

MTU Teams Win at CMU’s New Venture Challenge

Central Michigan University (CMU) and Michigan Tech collaborate each year to offer Michigan Tech students a chance to compete in CMU’s New Venture Challenge (NVC). This showcase event provides an opportunity for students at both universities to present their businesses and network with prospective investors, mentors and partners. Student participants also compete for a total of $60,000 in prizes and in-kind services.

On Friday (April 22, 2022), four Michigan Tech teams pitched their ideas and businesses in person on CMU’s campus in Mount Pleasant. Husky Innovate team members Jim Baker (associate vice president, research administration and Husky Innovate co-director) and Lisa Casper (Husky Innovate program manager) attended to support teams and strengthen innovation/entrepreneurship connections.

Students had an opportunity to compete in either the two-minute pitch competition or the seven-minute business model competition, as well as a gallery competition where teams had tables with individual displays and took questions from attendees.

In preparing for the NVC, the students participated in a number of Husky Innovate workshops and review sessions. The students also benefited from resources and expertise available within MTEC SmartZone, the local state-funded technology business incubator, and the Upper Peninsula Regional Small Business Development Center, which is hosted by the Office of Innovation and Commercialization in collaboration with the College of Business. The results below speak to the tireless efforts of our students and the impact of the programs provided by Husky Innovate and its partners.

NVC award winners are as follows:

Two-Minute Pitch Competition

• Jakob Christiansen (construction management) won first place and received $4,000. Christiansen pitched “ProBoard,” an e-commerce platform to solve issues in the construction material supply chain.

Seven-Minute Pitch Competition

• Bayle Golden (engineering management) won first place in the Social Mission category and received $10,000. Golden pitched “SafeRow,” an innovative wearable device designed to keep children safe when every second counts.
• Rourke Sylvain and Ali Dabas (both biomedical engineering) won second place in the High Tech High Growth category, receiving $5,000. Their pitch was “imi (integrated molecular innovations),” an electrochemical biosensor for T4 detection.
• Jordan Craven (management information systems, minoring in computer science) won third place in the High Tech High Growth category and received $2,000. Craven pitched “Tall and Small Designs,” a technology company that provides software as a service to retailers who sell clothes online.

Congratulations to our Husky Innovate student teams for all their hard work! We are proud of your grit during the last week of the semester. Your ideas are innovative and have the potential to change the world.

Thanks go out to our distributed team of mentors and our sponsors (Pavlis Honors College, Office of Innovation and Commercialization, College of Business, College of Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Civil Engineering) for their commitment to our students. We also thank CMU and especially Julie Messing, director of the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship, for the collaboration and congenial hospitality.

By Husky Innovate, Pavlis Honors College.