Graduate School Newsblog

Dean’s Award for Outstanding Scholar Award – Fall 2018 Recipients

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Congratulations! Outstanding Scholar Award Fall 2018 Recipients

Gina Roose (Accounting MS)
Shuaidong Zhao (Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD)
Priscilla Addison(Geological Engineering PhD)
Sampath Kumar Reddy Boyapally (Mechanical Engineering MS)
Rahul Jitendra Thakkar (Mechanical Engineering MS)
Nikhil Appasaheb Shinde(Mechanical Engineering MS)
Mitchel Timm (Mechanical Engineering MS)
Xinyu Ye (Environmental Engineering PhD)
Janarjan Bhandari (Atmospheric Science PhD)
Mingxi Fang (Chemistry PhD)
John Barnett (Environmental and Energy Policy PhD)
Dolendra Karki (Physics PhD)

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Dean’s Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award – Fall 2018 Recipients

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Congratulations! Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award Fall 2018 Recipients

Dongdong Ge (Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD)
Mohammadhossein Sadeghiamirshahidi (Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD)
Aaron Krieg (Chemical Engineering PhD)
Brandi Petryk (Geology MS)
Christa Meingast (Environmental Engineering PhD)
Luke Jurmu (Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics PhD)
Mingyang Li (Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics PhD)
Catherine Tislar (Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors PhD)
Vagarshak Begoyan (Chemistry PhD)
Sun Nguyen (Environmental and Energy Policy MS)
Jacob Blazejewski (Mathematical Sciences PhD)
Nicholas Videtich (Physics MS)

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U.S. Department of Energy 2019 Fusion Energy Sciences Postdoctoral Research Program

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The purpose of the Fusion Energy Sciences Postdoctoral Research Program is to offer recent doctoral degree recipients the opportunity to conduct research in DOE fusion energy research and development programs. Participants acquire knowledge and experience in areas of fusion energy science, interact with outstanding scientists and engineers, and have access to advanced equipment and facilities. Appointments are made to designated DOE laboratories, universities and contractor fusion energy centers. The mission of the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences is to expand the fundamental understanding of matter at very high temperatures and densities and to build the scientific foundation needed to develop a fusion energy source. Although tremendous scientific progress has been made since the inception of fusion energy research in the United States and internationally, fusion’s research frontiers remain replete with open problems of critical importance.

Selected Postdoctoral students receive a monthly stipend of $5,583.33 ($67,000.00 annually), a supplement to offset the cost of health insurance, a travel allowance and a relocation allowance, if eligible.

To qualify, applicants must be U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents and must have received a doctoral degree in an appropriate science or engineering discipline within four years of the desired starting date or expect to complete all requirements for such a degree prior to the desired starting date. Applications are due January 31, 2019. For a complete list of qualifications or to apply for the DOE Fusion Energy Sciences Postdoctoral Research Program please visit https://www.zintellect.com/Opportunity/Details/DOE-FES-2019

Past Research Host Facilities: Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois •California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California •Columbia University, New York, New York •General Atomics, San Diego, California •Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, Idaho Falls, Idaho •Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California •Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania •Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico •Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts •New York University, New York, New York •North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina •Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee •Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington •Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey •Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York •Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico •Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore, California •University of California, Berkeley, California •University of California, Davis, California •University of California, Irvine, California •University of California, Los Angeles, California 

U.S. citizenship or LPR required 

Application deadline: January 31, 2019, at 4:00 PM EST

How to Apply: Applications and supporting materials must be submitted at

https://www.zintellect.com/Opportunity/Details/DOE-FES-2019

Program Information: Detailed information about the FES Postdoctoral Research Program can be found at

http://www.orau.gov/doe-fes-postdoc/

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Doctoral Finishing Fellowship Fall 2018 Recipient – Long Zhang

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Long Zhang
Chemical Engineering

I am a Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering Department, and this is my fourth year. My research focuses on the dephosphorization from iron ore, particularly goethitic iron ore. I have been working with Dr. Tim Eisele on this project since fall 2014. By applying both bacterial and chemical leaching methods, we are able to remove about 95% of the phosphorus from the ore making the ore successfully meet the industrial standard.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Graduate School for the financial support, which allows me to focus entirely on the completion of my final dissertation. I also want to thank Dr. Eisele for his constant support throughout my entire graduate school studies.

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Doctoral Finishing Fellowship Fall 2018 Recipient -Sanaz Habibi

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Sanaz Habibi
Chemical Engineering

I joined Michigan Tech as a Ph.D. student in September 2014. Since January 2015, I have been working as a graduate research assistant at Medical micro-Device Engineering Research Lab. (M.D.-ERL). My research focuses on developing and optimizing reliable low-cost point of care tools for rapid and quantitative disease diagnosis.

I want to express my gratitude to Graduate School for providing me the Finishing Fellowship. This fellowship gave me the opportunity to put my entire focus on completing my dissertation. I would also like to thank my Ph.D. advisor Prof. Minerick for her constant support and encouragement.

 

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Doctoral Finishing Fellowship Fall 2018 Recipient – Jingyuan Wang

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Jingyuan Wang
Electrical Engineering

My research assistant position at Michigan Tech gives me an opportunity to not only work hard but also to work smart and efficiently towards my goals. I feel satisfaction and pride when helping and as a member of my research group. For my PhD research, I am working on demand response, optimal power flow, integration of distributed energy resources, improving computational performances on large-scale power grids with decentralized approaches, and developing Hardware-in-the-Loop simulation on large-scale transmission and distribution systems with Opal-RT, GAMS and Raspberry Pi server.

As a teaching assistant for two years in the past, I have learned that I should not only lead students and help them with problems, but also encourage and motivate them through open communication. By doing this, students show great enthusiasm for their study, which I find incredibly rewarding. Also, as a member of Society of Women Engineers (SWE), I communicate with female engineering alumni from Michigan Tech and learn a lot from them, such as how to balance life, work and family, and how to successfully deal with the issues that I will encounter as a female engineer in the future.
I would like to thank the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and the Graduate School for funding my academic endeavor. I would like to thank my PhD advisor, Dr. Sumit Paudyal, for supporting me in the past five years. I appreciated every single insightful discussion about my research with him and every single piece of suggestion that he ever gave me.
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Doctoral Finishing Fellowship Fall 2018 Recipient – Priscilla Addison

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Priscilla Addison
Geological Engineering

My interest in engineering started in childish defiance of wanting to prove to majority of the people I came across that girls can be engineers too, and pretty great ones at that! But thankfully it ended up being something I enjoyed immensely. My personality is more logical than emotional, so in school I found myself gravitating towards the Math and Physics subjects because of the structure in them. I enjoy that these subjects can help give the breakdown of why and how most things work. During my undergrad, I majored in civil engineering but got more interested in the geotecthnical/geological aspect of the discipline because of the encompassing nature of this subfield. I like the fact that it puts me in the heart of basically everything of the built environment since geological engineering deals with virtually everything that touches the earth! In my current role as a PhD candidate, I have been developing predictive models to isolate locations in the western US that are vulnerable to debris flows occurrences after wildfires. A recent model has been able to predict 8 out of 10 of these disastrous locations, which is a great improvement on the 4 out of 10 that an earlier model was predicting a couple years ago. This makes me so happy because it is a great step towards mitigating/ preventing the devastations usually associated with these events.

Throughout my academic career, I have been so lucky to have met so many wonderful people, especially my advisor, Dr. Oommen, who has been nothing short of supportive through all the highs and lows of this wringer of a grad school journey. He truly is amazing! I am also very thankful to the Graduate School for this award of Finishing Fellowship which is making it possible for me to fully concentrate on writing my dissertation and defending it without worrying about finances anymore. Medaase— this means “thank you” in my native language, Twi.

 

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Portage Health Foundation Graduate Assistantship Fall 2018 Recipient – Xueling Li

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Xueling Li
Mathematical Sciences

I am currently a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. My research focuses on developing statistical methods and computational tools to identify genetic variants that influence the susceptibility to complex diseases. I also work with professor Dana Johnson of the School of Business and Economics to better understand service quality and patient satisfaction, and identify opportunities for improved service delivery in rural healthcare using data provided by Aspirus Keweenaw about patients in the local area.

I feel extremely honored and very grateful for the support provided by the Portage Health Foundation, which allows me to pursue such cutting-edge research here at Michigan Tech.

 

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Workshops on Using an Individual Development Plan (IDP)

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The Graduate School is pleased to have Dr. Joerg Schlatterer and Dr. Corrie Kuniyoski visit our campus on November 7, 2018 to conduct two workshops on using Individual Development Plans (IDPs) to assist in career development for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars.

Please register online so that we can plan for your attendance.

Workshop for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

Planning for Your Career using an IDP
10-11:30am, MUB Alumni Lounge

Join the Michigan Tech Graduate School and the American Chemical Society (ACS) for a 1.5h interactive career planning workshop geared towards graduate students and postdocs. Workshop participants will learn about the four critical components of career development and planning, how they can relate to their individual situation, and finding their career “sweet spot”. Participants will be introduced to the Individual Development Plan (IDP) concept and how IDPs can help set clear goals toward a desired career path. As an example for online IDPs, the ACS tool ChemIDPTM(ChemIDP.org) will be introduced.

Workshop for Advisors

Individual Development Plan Assisted Mentoring
3-4pm, MUB Alumni Lounge

Adequate preparation of the future workforce is essential for the survival of the U.S. as an economic and innovative powerhouse in the world. Numerous reports from organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences, the American Chemical Society (ACS), and the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) have highlighted the importance of mentoring for the successful navigation through college, graduate school, or postdoctoral training and towards securing satisfying jobs. Federal funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation strongly recommend the use of Individual Development Plans (IDPs) and postdoctoral mentoring plans for trainees, respectively.

This 1 hour interactive workshop will introduce the IDP process as a mentoring tool and share related resources available to advisors. The IDP process consists of four components: 1) self-assessment, 2) career exploration, 3) skill strengthening, and 4) goal setting. ChemIDPTM, the IDP tool and workshop developed by the ACS for trainees in the chemical sciences, will serve as an example of how use of IDPs has the potential to prepare faculty and trainees for efficient mentor-mentee discussions.

Speaker Biographies

Joerg Schlatterer, PhD

Joerg Schlatterer leads the ACS Graduate and Postdoctoral Scholars Office. Dr. Schlatterer studied chemistry in Berlin and received his PhD in Heidelberg (Germany) in 2004. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Florida before moving on to become a research associate and subsequently a faculty member in biochemistry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Dr. Schlatterer published more than 16 peer-reviewed articles and filed 4 patents and patent applications. At Einstein Dr. Schlatterer also co-created and directed the Career & Professional Development Program for Graduate Students & Postdoctoral Researchers. Dr. Schlatterer worked as Assistant Dean of Faculty Professional Development at Columbia University Medical Center before joining the National Science Foundation in summer 2014 as a National Science Foundation Program Director for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Joerg joined the American Chemical Society to lead the Graduate and Postdoctoral Scholars Office in March 2017.

Corrie Kuniyoshi, PhD

Corrie Kuniyoshi is a Senior Program Manager in the ACS Graduate & Postdoctoral Scholars Office in the Learning and Career Development Department of the ACS. She received her Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, examining oxidation pathways of guanine and cycloaddition reactions of fullerenes. Dr. Kuniyoshi’s work and interests focus on the intersection of STEM graduate career development with innovative technology. Dr. Kuniyoshi has gained over 10 years of work experience, organizing career workshops, symposia, and events for graduates and postdocs searching for academic jobs and acting as managing editor for a newsletter and executive editor of a magazine focused on graduate education. For the last 4 years her work has focused exclusively on strategic development and delivery of career planning resources in the creation of technology tools, programs, and articles focused on the myriad career options available to scientists with M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Two of the projects she is most proud of include co-leading the development and implementation of ACS’s ChemIDPTM (ChemIDP.org), a comprehensive interactive individual development plan platform available (free) online, and developing the Graduate Postdoctoral Chemist Magazine (www.acs.org/gradchemist). As a Myers-Briggs certified facilitator (and INTJ) she greatly enjoys facilitating personality assessment workshops and discovering more about how personality plays a role in career choices and the workplace environment.

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