Graduate School Newsblog

Category: News

Interesting stories about and for our students.

Graduate School Announces Award Recipients

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The Graduate School is pleased to announce that the following students have earned:

Doctoral Finishing Fellowships:

Jun Ma, PhD candidate in Computer Science
Evgeniy Kulakov, PhD candidate in Geology
Colin Gurganus, PhD candidate in Atmospheric Sciences
Suntara Fueangfung, PhD candidate in Chemistry
Fang Chen, PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering
Xiaohui Wang, PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering
Jennifer Riehl, PhD candidate in Forest Molecular Genetics and Biotechnology
Stephanie Ogren, PhD candidate in Biological Sciences
Tayloria Adams, PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering

Dean’s Fellowships:

Bonnie Zwissler, PhD candidate in Civil Engineering
Matthew Brege, PhD candidate in Chemistry
Bryan Steinhoff, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics

DeVlieg Foundation Fellowships:

Howard Haselhuhn, PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering
John Henderson, PhD candidate in Forest Science

King-Ch`avez-Parks Future Faculty Fellowships:

Zoe Miller, MS candidate in Environmental Engineering
Darnishia Slade, PhD candidate in Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors
Ronesha Strozier, MS candidate in Environmental Policy

Photographs and details of awards and fellowships coordinated by the Graduate School can be found online:

www.mtu.edu/gradschool/administration/academics/awards-fellowships/

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ICAD 2014 ThinkTank (Doctoral Consortium) Scholars

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PhD students Maryam Fakhr Hosseini and Steven Landry, both in the Mind Music Machine Lab, applied cognitive science and human factors graduate program, have been selected as ICAD 2014 ThinkTank (Doctoral Consortium) Scholars. They will present their research at a special pre-ICAD 2014 ThinkTank Symposium with leading scholars in the field of auditory display and sonification. The students will receive generous travel support for the conference from the National Science Foundation.

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Houghton Held Chemistry for Thai Undergraduate Interns

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Nattasak Sukkasam and Tapee Saowalakkul left hot, humid Bangkok, Thailand, in March for a two-month internship at Michigan Tech. They landed in Houghton in a snowstorm.

But their mentor, Parinya “Prince” Chakartnarodom, had prepared them, with snow survival tips—and coats and boots. Prince is a Michigan Tech alumnus and the Thai undergraduates’ materials engineering professor at Kasetsart University in Bangkok.

The interns were invited to Tech by Komar Kawatra, chair of chemical engineering. The idea for the exchange program arose when Jennifer Donovan, director of news and media relations at Michigan Tech, spent a month at Kasetsart University on a Fulbright specialist grant last November. She returned to Michigan Tech determined to help develop some exchanges between the Michigan and Thai universities. This was the first of what she hopes will be ongoing student and faculty exchanges.

Read the full news story.

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Toward Smarter Underwater Drones

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Nina Mahmoudian, second from right, and her team of student researchers on the Michigan Tech waterfront, prepare to launch their underwater drone, ROUGHIE, in Portage Lake.
With better brains, underwater drones would spend less time searching and more time finding what they’re looking for, including missing airliners believed lost at the bottom of the ocean.  If Michigan Tech’s Nina Mahmoudian has her way, the next generation of autonomous underwater vehicles will have a much better chance of getting it right.

The full story is available online.

Published in Tech Today by Marcia Goodrich, senior content specialist
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Michigan Tech’s Industrial Research Gains Stature

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Known for hands-on education and leading-edge research, Michigan Tech’s stature among institutions has earned another important distinction: its proportion of industry-sponsored research, compared to other schools in the state and nation.  According to National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) data, Michigan Tech ranked second in the state among public institutions and is in the top 15 percent in the nation among 650-plus universities.

Why is this important?

“It means that, in addition to finding some of the next greatest discoveries, we do research that is relevant,” said Jim Baker, executive director of Innovation and Industry Engagement at Tech “And these same industry partners hire our graduates.”

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Published in Tech Today by Dennis Walikainen, senior content specialist

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Grad students co-authored research published in Scientific Reports

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Graduate students Ankit Vora (ECE) and Jephias Gwamuri (EMSE) co-authored “Exchanging Ohmic Losses in Metamaterial Absorbers with Useful Optical Absorption for Photovoltaics, in Scientific Reports” with Anand Kulkarni, Joshua Pearce (MSE/ECE) and Durdu Güney (ECE). It is available online at Scientific Reports.

Published in Tech Today.

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Michigan Tech Alumnus, Apps Turn Ordinary People into Hydrologists

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Adam Ward’s got a lot of helping hands as he tries to determine stream and lake depths in Iowa. Through CrowdHydrology.org, anyone can read the water level off a ruler (more scientifically, stream stage off a staff gauge) and text the numbers to an online database.

The citizen scientists are helping researchers elsewhere, too—New York, Wisconsin, Utah and Michigan—and it’s all the brainchild of Ward’s colleague, Chris Lowry, an assistant professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Buffalo.

“With budget cuts proliferating, I had to figure out how to measure streams in a cheap fashion,” says Lowry. “I got a giant ruler, laminated a sign at Kinko’s and set up the first gauge using Google voicemail and help from the USGS for the texts. It worked.”

For the full news story, see CrowdHydrology.

Published in Tech Today by Dennis Walikainen, senior content specialist

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Ten Times Over

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A sea of stories and support behind the Class of 2014
It’s never a snapshot of just one perspective.

On campuses across the country, students are ascending one side of a stage, shaking hands, and descending as graduates, careers and experiences and possibilities laid out before them.

These are a few snapshots of one. But not just one. Rebecca Miner is finishing her third Tech degree today, a doctorate in Rhetoric and Technical Communication. Her family is seated in a skybox in the arena while she’s up near the stage with the rest of the newly minted PhDs. It’s quiet in the arena. Warm. The only constant sound, aside from the voices calling names, is the sound of camera shutters capturing every moment ten times over.

Read the full news story.

Published in Tech Today by Kevin Hodur, content specialist

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Michigan Tech’s Peace Corps Masters Internation Program Tops in Nation-Again

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For the ninth year in a row, Michigan Technological University ranks as the number one university nationwide for the number of Peace Corps Master’s International (PCMI) students currently serving as Peace Corps volunteers. Michigan Tech has 32 graduate students overseas, earning the University top spot on the Peace Corps’ annual ranking of PCMI and Paul D. Coverdell Fellows graduate schools.

Michigan Tech has 10 different PCMI programs in three colleges and schools. The Peace Corps said that is the largest number of PCMI programs at any university in the nation.

In the PCMI program, students incorporate Peace Corps service as credit toward their master’s degree. The Coverdell Fellows Program provides returned Peace Corps volunteers with scholarships, internships in underserved American communities, and stipends to earn an advanced degree after they complete their Peace Corps service.

“One of Michigan Tech’s primary goals is to conduct innovative research and education that promotes sustainable economic and social development worldwide,” said Tech President Glenn Mroz. “Our Peace Corps Masters International Program is clearly achieving that goal. It speaks to Michigan Tech’s commitment that a school the size of ours is consistently first in the nation in the number of Peace Corps volunteers.”

For the full story, see Peace Corps.

Published in Tech Today by Jenn Donova, director of news and media relations

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