I started as a PhD student in Atmospheric Sciences at Michigan Tech in August 2018. My interest in Atmospheric Sciences began during an elective course I took while pursuing my master’s degree in physics at the National Institute of Technology (NIT Calicut). Since then, my interest in Atmospheric Sciences has grown, and I have been eager to learn more about it.
My doctoral research focuses on investigating the physical, chemical, and optical properties of aerosols, which are particles suspended in the atmosphere, specifically those emitted from biomass burning. Over the course of five years, with the support of my advisor and colleagues at Michigan Tech, I have gained valuable knowledge and experience that will undoubtedly benefit me in my future endeavors. Additionally, I had the opportunity to expand my exposure and understanding of the subject through an internship at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), where I worked with Dr. Swarup China. During my internship, I estimated the optical properties of tar ball particles that are formed during biomass combustion. I also studied the physical and chemical properties of aerosols from an Urban polluted region that is highly influenced by biomass burning.
I am grateful to the Graduate Dean Awards Advisory panel for granting me the finishing fellowship award and to my advisor, Prof. Claudio Mazzoleni, for his unwavering support and guidance throughout my PhD journey. I also thank my mentor at PNNL, Dr. Swarup China for his hard work and dedication in helping me complete my PhD. Additionally, I express my thanks to both my current and former research group members for engaging in excellent discussions and fostering a spirit of teamwork. I eagerly anticipate defending my thesis and advancing along my chosen career path.
Nupur Bihari
Materials Science and Engineering
I moved to the beautiful city of Houghton as a Master’s student in Electrical Engineering and worked on my thesis (under Dr. Paul Bergstrom) on a microfabricated blood typing sensor. Continuing to explore semiconductor microfabrication and vacuum systems, I joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Fall 2016 under Dr. Joshua Pearce. I began my PhD research on integrating the disparate worlds of additive manufacturing and semiconductor fabrication.
Additive manufacturing is radically changing the way polymer-based components are manufactured. It has enabled customization, reduced costs and led to unprecedented growth in the acceptance and use of polymers in scientific research equipment. Despite the ubiquity of 3-D printed materials in research applications, they have remained conspicuously absent from semiconductor research, primarily due to their apparent incompatibility with vacuum equipment. This incompatibility is mainly in terms of outgassing of volatile organic species. Outgassing in polymers arises when low molecular mass entities present in the material matrix escape when exposed to vacuum. If polymers are coated with a conformal, crystalline, inorganic film introduced with atomic layer deposition (ALD), then outgassing can be reduced to a large extent because the surface layer acts as a seal to prevent these low molecular weight species present in the bulk of the material from escaping. Going a step further, I am in the process of building a first of its kind ALD system almost entirely out of 3-D printed polymeric materials.
I would like to express my gratitude to Graduate School for the finishing fellowship. I am honored to have my research get this recognition.
I am sincerely grateful to the Graduate Dean Awards Advisory Panel and the Dean for selecting me as a Finishing Fellowship awardee. Receiving this honor marks a joyous milestone in my PhD journey, and I am eager to embark on the final phase of my academic pursuit.
My academic journey began in Oslo, Norway, where I earned a BSc in Physiotherapy and a MSc in Sports Physiotherapy. Driven by a passion for promoting preventive health measures, I ventured into the field of Exercise and Sports Medicine. Through my Master’s thesis, I connected with my current advisor, Dr. Erich Petushek, who encouraged me to explore solutions beyond traditional Sport Medicine boundaries. This led me to a Ph.D. position in the Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors (ACSHF) program at Michigan Technological University (MTU).
Choosing to specialize in Human Factors in Sports Medicine, I focused on preventative measures to reduce the risk of injuries and diseases. My research involves developing an exercise intervention usability scale to predict and identify barriers for intervention uptake and adherence, bridging the realms of Human Factors and Exercise/Sports Medicine.
The Finishing Fellowship is pivotal in providing the necessary support to conclude my Ph.D. journey. I express my gratitude not only for the financial support but also for reaffirming the value of the work I am passionate about. Special thanks go to my advisor, Dr. Erich Petushek, for unwavering support and guidance, my committee members, and the faculty and friends in the ACSHF program.
As I look to the future with excitement, I am eager to make meaningful contributions to the field. This fellowship reinforces my commitment to advancing research at the intersection of Human Factors and Exercise/Sports Medicine, and I am enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie ahead. Once again, thank you for this invaluable support in my academic pursuit.
Each summer, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), located in Schloss Laxenburg near Vienna, Austria, hosts a selected group of graduate students, primarily doctoral, from around the world in its Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP). These students work closely with IIASA’s senior scientists on projects related both to their thesis research and one or more IIASA research programs.
Application deadline is January 13, apply online.
For students selected to participate, funding is available for travel and living support, principally from IIASA’s twenty-one National Member Organizations (NMOs), who fund primarily students from NMO countries. However, applicants from all nations are eligible to apply, and some unrestricted fellowships are available.
IIASA is an international, nongovernmental research institution located just outside Vienna, Austria, supported by its twenty-one National Member Organizations. IIASA is known for its interdisciplinary research, combining natural and social sciences with integrated assessment techniques and advanced mathematical methodologies, with a goal of providing policy insight on issues of regional and global importance in the following fields:
GLOBAL PROBLEM AREAS
- Energy and Climate Change
- Food and Water
- Poverty and Equity
PROGRAM AREAS
- Energy
- Transitions to New Technologies
- Advanced Systems Analysis
- Ecosystem Services and Management
- Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases
- Evolution and Ecology
- World Population
- Risk Policy and Vulnerability
- Water
Ever since my freshman year of high school when another older student approached me to join a physics club sponsored by Fermilab which focused on cosmic ray air showers, I’ve been fond of both the theoretical and experimental side of physics. It is quite the coincidence, or perhaps the exact opposite, that my research now focuses on detecting some of the highest energy gamma-ray air showers with HAWC.
After attending a very large high school in a suburb of Chicago, I decided to apply to Tech after a family friend recommended the school and I immediately enjoyed the smaller and closer-knit feel of Tech. I did both my undergraduate (B.S. in Physics and B.S. in Computational Math) and my graduate studies at Tech and the end of my academic journey with Tech is a very bittersweet moment for me. My Ph.D. thesis is mostly focused on using gamma-rays detected by HAWC over nearly a decade to create a catalog of some of the most extreme galactic particle accelerators like supernova remnants, pulsars, and micro-quasars. Catalogs historically have provided useful information to both theorists and other experiments to help guide and accelerate research in and beyond the field of astrophysics. To help create this catalog and assist future analysis work in the HAWC collaboration I developed a software framework to automate source finding in the HAWC dataset.
I want to thank many different organizations and people who have helped me throughout my university journey. First, the Graduate Dean Awards Advisory Panel for providing their wonderful support to help me finish strong. Second, my advisor Prof. Huentemeyer along with our research group for the invaluable support they’ve provided to me during my Ph.D. studies. Third, the physics department as a whole because without their support both personally and fiscally throughout both my undergrad and grad experience I would not have made it to where I am today.
I started working on my PhD in Fall 2017 at the Mechanical Engineering – Engineering Mechanics department with Dr. Susanta Ghosh. Previous to this, I obtained my masters’ degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, India, in Aerospace Engineering and a Bachelors’ degree from Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT), Jaipur, India. During my masters’, I was awarded the DAAD fellowship to work on my thesis at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany.
At Michigan Tech, I worked on several different projects. I began working on Micro-architectured glass materials and developed a novel analytical model to simulate the complex behavior of these materials. In another project, I developed an atomistic-continuum model to simulate large area mono-layers of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides (TMDs). This model can be used to obtain the deformation of mono-layer TMDs under various loading conditions and can provide a way to alter their optical, electrical, and mechanical properties in a controlled manner. In collaboration with Shashank Pathrudkar, we developed a novel Machine learning model to predict the high-dimensional deformation of multi-walled carbon nanotubes. This model is as accurate as of the atomistic-continuum model while being several orders of magnitude faster. I am currently working on extending these models for several other applications.
I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Susanta Ghosh, for his support and guidance at each step. I would also like to thank the Graduate Dean Awards Advisory Panel and the dean for awarding me the finishing fellowship. This fellowship will help in completing all the work on time, including writing and defending my dissertation.
I completed my B.S. (2015) and M.S. (2020) in Chemical Engineering at Michigan Technological University. As a graduate student I am completing my studies with Professor Kawatra in the Department of Chemical Engineering. My work has focused on the efficient and sustainable processing of raw and waste materials in mineral processing, which includes iron ore processing, carbon dioxide capture and utilization, and rare earth extraction from waste materials such as red mud. This work has led to several publications, including a highly cited review on the flotation of iron ores. My dissertation will build upon my master’s thesis and focus on understanding the intricacies of pelletizing iron ore to minimize waste and environmental concerns such as fine dusts.
I am grateful to Professor Kawatra and my committee for the support and guidance he has provided over my years at Michigan Tech, to my fellow graduate students under Professor Kawatra for being there to bounce ideas off of and to share insightful discussions with, and to my high school chemistry teacher who suggested Michigan Technological University to me in the first place.
I am deeply grateful and honored to receive the Finishing Fellowship Award from the graduate school and the graduate dean’s advisory panel.
My journey at Michigan Tech began in 2018 when I commenced my graduate studies. Working alongside Dr. Susanta Ghosh, I completed my Master’s thesis in 2021. The research I conducted during this time inspired me to pursue a Ph.D. I’ve since dedicated myself to exploring phase field modeling and its applications in computational fracture mechanics, as well as employing Machine Learning to solve these intricate mathematical models.
My research aims to harness machine learning techniques to streamline computationally intensive simulations across various fields such as mechanics, phase separation, and weather prediction. These models hold tremendous potential for accelerating simulations of complex material failures and other physical systems described by partial differential equations.
I express my heartfelt gratitude to the graduate school for recognizing me with the Finishing Fellowship Award. This acknowledgment serves as a driving force as I enter the final phase of my Ph.D. journey, reflecting the university’s confidence and support in my work. I extend my sincere thanks to Dr. Ghosh for the invaluable opportunity to be part of his research group. His trust and encouragement have been instrumental throughout my Master’s and Ph.D. endeavors. I’d also like to acknowledge the unwavering support of the faculty and staff of the MEEM department during my academic journey.
Once I complete my PhD I will be joining Idaho National Laboratory as a post-doctoral researcher. I am eagerly looking forward to completing my doctoral research and continuing to advance in my academic career.
I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mathematical Sciences starting in the Fall of 2018. My advisor is professor Qiuying Sha. Prior to joining MTU, I obtained a Master’s degree in System Theory from the School of Systems Science at Beijing Normal University (2018) and a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Heilongjiang University (2015). My research is in statistical genetics. I focus on the development of novel statistical methods and efficient bioinformatical tools to find genetic variants or genes related to complex diseases and traits, such as type II diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, et al. One of my main projects is incorporating the genotype and phenotype association network to simultaneously analyze multiple phenotypes and multiple genotypes and improve the power to identify genes that are associated with complex diseases by using the constructed network. I also work on serval collaborative interdisciplinary projects falling in statistical genetics, RNA sequencing data analyses, clinical statistical problems, etc.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the Graduate Dean Awards Advisory Panel for the support, which allows me to focus on such cutting-edge research here at Michigan Tech and prepare the thesis/manuscripts for publication in the coming spring. I also want to thank my advisors Professor Qiuying Sha and Professor Shuanglin Zhang for all of their valuable guidance and support over the last four years, and I am extremely grateful to the graduate program in Math Department for their constant help and generous support throughout my entire graduate school studies.
Xuewei’s Finishing Fellowship was generously supported by the Neil Hakala Endowed Fellowship.
by John Gagnon, promotional writer
There is an old story about soft-spoken, reticent Finns.
A Swede and a Finn stand at the bar, drinks in hand.
“Cheers,” says the Swede.
“Did we come to talk or drink?” says the Finn.
Gary Kaunonen, a graduate student in the rhetoric and technical communication program, is of Finnish heritage but definitely doesn’t fit that proverbial mold. Indeed, he is effusive–in speech and writing–about a subject that is dear to his heart and mind: Finnish immigrant labor and political activity in the Keweenaw.
A native of Minnesota, Kaunonen has written a book, “Challenge Accepted: A Finnish Immigrant Response to Industrial America in Michigan’s Copper Country,” which was just published by Michigan State University Press. The book is his master’s thesis in Tech’s industrial archaeology program.
The Michigan Tech Archives will host a presentation and book signing by Kaunonen at 4 p.m., Tuesday, August 17, in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library.
Kaunonen calls the book “a honed-in look” at Finnish immigrants and their living and working conditions–and often radical union activities–in the years 1904-14. The backdrop of this history, Kaunonen says, was a “lopsided distribution of prosperity” that led to “proletarian consciousness” and a “struggle for the betterment of lives.” All of it was “a powder keg” that exploded into violence on the copper range in the 1913-14 Copper Strike and the infamous Italian Hall disaster, in both of which Finns had “a huge and significant role.”
“The upstart Finnish immigrants,” he writes, “often stumbled and stammered in awkward directions, but for a time that took a back seat to working class solidarity. They seldom wavered in their bold attempt to shape their lives into what they perceived to be a more just and equal existence.”
These immigrants had marked reputations. “Finns were respected workers,” he says, “but they were also suspected agitators. They had a big impact on labor relations in this area. They resisted company dictates and mandates. They challenged the inequalities of the traditional mining and industrial society.”
His research led him to the archives at both Michigan Tech and Finlandia University, where he sought material culture–what he calls the “hard evidence” of historic circumstances. He notes, for instance, that Hancock’s leftist newspaper, Tyomies (The Worker), moved to bigger and bigger buildings and bought bigger printing presses to accommodate a burgeoning readership and a growing business. Tyomies would become a communist organ.
Kaunonen can tell the story of immigrant Finns without championing any specific cause. “I’m not casting aspersions on the mining,” he says. “But you had these huge mining companies and the vast amount of wealth and inequality they created—and then you had this little ethnic group trying to make a place for themselves. I have a soft spot in my heart for the underdog. Not that I wholly agree with everything they did, but they should certainly have a place at the table, so to speak, in telling their story.”
He went to college just to play baseball. He quit because of injuries, poked around, and worked in factories. Then the drifter became a father. “I decided I was wasting my life. I thought, well, my daughter is here, and how can I lecture her on working hard and using your gifts if I don’t do that myself. So I decided to go back to school.”
That proved to be a purposeful enterprise. He earned three bachelor’s degrees from Minnesota State University-Mankato, his IA master’s at Michigan Tech, and is now a PhD student here. Previously, he was an archivist at Finlandia. It’s been “a winding road” that has become a quest. He has now written two books on Finnish immigrants. An earlier one, “Finns in Michigan,” also was published by Michigan State University Press.
In his endeavors, Kaunonen is grateful for what he calls “a slew of good professors” in social sciences and now humanities. “They inspired me by what they did and currently do.”
As did his family.
“I write because I have an admiration for my parents and grandparents. All of them were members of the working class”—both grandfathers worked on the Minnesota iron range–“and I’m kind of honoring them and their contributions to American labor.”
Published in Tech Today.