To give top Clark School doctoral student researchers special recognition that will be valuable in launching their careers, and to show all students the importance of high quality engineering research, Dean Darryll Pines created the Dean's Doctoral Research Award Competition this year. Students submitted their work through competitions at the unit level. Three judges assembled in the Kim Engineering Building last weekend to evaluate the finalists, and Dean Pines has announced the winners for 2009:

First Place:

Shenqiang Ren, MSE (Advisor: Prof. Manfred Wuttig)
"Bottom-up Multiferroic Nanostructures"

Prize $1,500

Second Place (tie):

Edvin Cetegen, ME (Advisor: Prof. Michael Ohadi)
"Force Fed Microchannel Heat Transfer for High Heat Flux Cooling"

Beibei Wang, ECE (Advisor: Prof. K.J. Ray Liu)
"Dynamic Spectrum Allocation over Cognitive Radio Networks"

Prize: $1,000

Third Place:

Enlu Zhou, ECE/ISR (Advisors: Professors Steve Marcus and Michael Fu)
"Particle Filtering for Decision Making and Optimization"

Prize: $500

Dean Pines congratulated all the winners (and their advisors) on the quality of their submissions, noting the power of competition to inspire high student achievement. He also thanked the judges: hybrid electric/gasoline powertrain inventor and 2008 Innovation Hall of Fame inductee Alex Severinsky, and Clark School Board of Visitors members Reed Harrison (president and COO, Cogent Communications) and Jean-Luc Abaziou (venture partner, Highland Capital Partners).

A similar research award competition at the Master’s level will also be held.