Four young researchers from Bourns
College of Engineering were among twelve winners at the 9th
Annual UC Systemwide Bioengineering Symposium, held June
20-22 at the UCR campus.
Sean Guthrie, a bioengineering major, won the Abbot Vascular
Second Place Poster Award for “Quantitative Conversion of
Alcohols to Aldehydes Using Alcohol Dehydrogenase”,
outlining research he performs under the guidance of his
advisor Professor Valentine Vullev.
Shadi Mahjoob, a mechanical engineering major, won the
ResMed Second Place Poster Award for her project
“Computational Investigation of Transient Heat Transport
through a Porous Filled Heat Exchanger Applicable in
Biological Sciences”. Her advisor is Professor Kambiz Vafai.
Feng Sun, a mechanical engineering major advised by
Professor Guillermo Aguilar, won the Boston Scientific
Second Place Award for his oral presentation “Thermal
Modeling and Experimental Validation of Hair and Skin Tissue
Heated by Intense Pulsed Light”.
Postdoctoral researcher Lorenzo Martinez-Suastegui won
the Genentech Third Place Poster Award for “Temperature
Measurements of Laser Irradiation for Tissue Protection
During Cryosurgery.” He works in Professor Aguilar’s lab.
Pictured at the awards ceremony (l. to r.) are Professor
V.G.J. Rodgers (presenter), and winners Dennis Yoon, Lili
Peng, Rajaram Krishnan, Sean Guthrie, Shadi Mahjoob, Rachel
Marullo, Lorenzo Martinez-Suastegui and Shay Edwards.
Awardees not pictured are Feng Sun, Sunny Shah, Angela Chen
and Sara St. James.
The UC Systemwide Bioengineering Symposium was created to
foster exchange and discussions on bioengineering research
performed on the 10 UC campuses. This year there was a focus
on increased UC Bioengineering interaction and improved
collaborations with California’s vast biomedical firms as
well as government agencies.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Congratulations to Henry!
Engineering undergraduates shine in UCR research publication
June 20, 2008
Fully half the
research papers published in the 2008
UCR Undergraduate Research Journal were
authored by undergraduate students from
the Bourns College of Engineering (BCOE).
This is outstanding, since the Bourns
College hosts less than 10 percent of
UCR’s total undergraduate population.
According to Dean Abbaschian, these
numbers illustrate the extent to which
the Bourns College emphasizes
undergraduate research opportunities. A
feature that makes Bourns stand out
among top-tier engineering colleges is
that it is large enough to have
world-class research, yet small enough
to give undergraduates personal
attention.
“I am not surprised at all, but proud of
our students,” Abbaschian continued. “A
hallmark of our undergraduate programs
is to provide opportunity to our
undergraduates to participate in
research with our faculty. The strong
showing of BCoE students’ papers in the
Journal is a good indication for the
positive outcome of such research
training.”
This was the second year for the
refereed research journal in which a
student editorial board judges the best
of the university’s undergraduate
research for the year.
Sean Brady, a ’08 graduate in
environmental engineering, was
recognized for his paper “Zero Waste
Biodiesel: Using Glycerin and Biomass to
Create Renewable Energy.”
Alexander S. Cheung, a third year
bioengineering student, was included in
the journal with his paper
“Computational Prediction of Association
Free Energies for the C3d-CR2 Complex
and Comparison to Experimental Data.”
Deep Shah, a ’08 graduate in electrical
engineering, was honored for his paper
titled “Motion Based Bird Sensing Using
Frame Differencing and Gaussian
Mixture.”
Lindsay D. Yee, a ’08 graduate in
environmental engineering, was honored
for her paper on “Secondary Organic
Aerosol (SOA) and Ozone Formation from
Agricultural Pesticides.”
Elizabeth Zielins, a third year
bioengineering student, was included in
the journal with her paper
“Bacterium-Induced Flourescence-Enhancement
Kinetics: Breaking 100-Year-Old
Traditions of Staining Bioanalyses.”
Five of the 16 winners at the UCR
Graduate Student Association’s annual
research conference also represented
BCOE. Rajwant S. Bedi, (Chemical and
Environmental Engineering), Marlon
Thomas, (Bioengineering), Henry Vu
(Mechanical Engineering) were winners in
the best presentation category.
Poster session winners included Mohammad
A. Khayer (Electrical Engineering) and
Shadi Mahjoob (Mechanical Engineering).
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
