Congratulations to all the Engineering and Computer Science students who participated in the 2025 Research Day. There were 97 poster presentations in total along with a keynote lecture by Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Charles Driscoll.

POSTER PRESENTATION AWARDS

First Place (tied): Wanning Ding – Breaking the Mempool Bottleneck: Defending Blockchain Transactions from Asymmetric DoS Attacks. Advisor: Dr. Yuzhe Tang

First Place (tied): Ruosi Qiao – Is Less Really More? Fake News Detection with Limited Information. Advisor: Dr. Yeqing Wang

First Place (tied): Anthony Watt – Prediction of Drug-Induced Cardiotoxicity Using Machine Learning Analysis of hiPSC-CM Functional Dynamics. Advisor: Dr. Zhen Ma

First Place (tied): Frank Chen – Continuous Stress Monitoring with Wearable Devices: A Multimodal Framework for Real-Time Assessment. Advisor: Dr. Vir Phoha

First Place(tied): Ratnakshi Mandal – Unlocking the Secrets of DNA and RNA packing.  Advisor: Dr. Shikha Nangia

First Place(tied): Poojan Kaswekar – Enhanced dendrite suppression via hybrid interlayer in all-solid-state lithium-metal batteries. Advisor: Dr. Quinn Qiao

Second Place (tied): Cole Wilhelm – Investigation of Solid Oxide Fuel Cells with Varying Hydrogen/Ammonia Fuel Mixtures. Advisor: Dr. Jeongmin Ahn

Second Place (tied): Jing Cheng – Harnessing Natural Oscillations for High-Speed, Efficient Asymmetrical Locomotion in Quadrupedal Robots. Advisor: Dr. Zhenyu Gan

Second Place (tied): Michael Seitz – Deciphering peri-implantation human development with stem-cell-based embryonic models. Advisor: Dr. Era Jain

Second Place (tied): Mingrui Jiang – The quaternary structure origin of the fibrillation of sickle hemoglobin: a molecular dynamics study. Advisor: Dr. Zhao Qin

Second Place (tied): Sevde Nur Can – A Smart Answer to Wound Healing: Vanillic Acid-Incorporated Polyurethane Shape Memory Polymer Foams for Hemorrhage and Infection Management. Advisor: Dr. Mary Beth Monroe

Second Place (tied): Ashok Thapa – Oscillating Heat Pipe with Highest Thermal Conductivity. Advisor: Dr. Shalabh C. Maroo

Third Place (tied): David Moses – Polymer-Modified Catalysts for Improved Biomass Conversion Processes. Advisor: Dr. Theodore Walker

Third Place (tied): Zixi Wang – Asynchronous Decentralized Federated Learning Deconstructs Excessively Large Batches. Advisor: Dr. M. Cenk Gursoy

Third Place (tied): Chenxu Zhao – Soft Shell Grippers with Highly Tunable Dry Adhesion through Low Negative Pressure for Universal Manipulation. Advisor: Dr. Wanliang Shan

Third Place (tied): Riliang Li –  Numerical Study on the Influence of Unbonded Reinforcement on Strengthened Reinforced Concrete Beams. Advisor: Dr. Riyad Aboutaha

Third Place (tied): Zehui Han – Active topography with mucin coating inhibits biofilm formation by interrupting bacterial motility. Advisor: Dr. Dacheng Ren

Third Place (tied): Haodong Yang – Combinatorial Group Testing in Presence of Deletions. Advisor: Dr. Venkata Gandikota

 Honorable Mention:  Yasser Alqaham – 16 Ways to Gallop: Energetics and Body Dynamics of High-Speed Quadrupedal Gaits. Advisor: Dr. Zhenyu Gan

Honorable Mention:  Natalie Petryk – Biodegradable and Bioactive Polyurethane Foams to Improve Traumatic Wound Healing. Advisor: Dr. Mary Beth Monroe

Honorable Mention:  Matthew Qualters – SPOD Analysis of Experimental Flow Control within a Supersonic Multi-Stream Rectangular Nozzle. Advisor: Dr. Fernando Zigunov

Honorable Mention:  Shao-Peng Yang – COMETS: Cost-effective Multi-node Efficient Training System with Memory Pooling and Sharing. Advisor: Dr. Bryan Kim

Honorable Mention:  Paul Sagoe – Tailoring Polymeric Nanoparticles Properties for Enhanced Targeted Delivery to Macrophage Subpopulation. Advisor: Dr. Era Jain

Honorable Mention:  Pardha Sourya Nayani – Approaching fundamental limits on bandwidth-to-thickness ratio for electrically thin absorbers through dispersion engineering. Advisor: Dr. Younes Ra’di