UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Forty Penn State graduate students were named recipients of Penn State’s most prestigious annual graduate student awards, administered by the Graduate School in collaboration with several Penn State units. The awards recognize and celebrate graduate students who are excelling in teaching, research and service, as well as other academic pursuits.
“This year’s award recipients have made an astounding impact, and they are deserving of recognition,” said Kathy Drager, interim dean of the Graduate School and vice provost for Graduate Education. “Whether they are developing new materials for energy storage, mentoring undergraduates in how to excel in research, or studying ways to design more sustainable refugee camps, these graduate students represent some of the highest caliber of academic excellence at Penn State.”
The awards and recipients include:
Alumni Association Dissertation Award
Thirteen graduate students received the Alumni Association Dissertation Award. This honor recognizes outstanding professional accomplishment and achievement in scholarly research and is among the most prestigious available to Penn State graduate students.
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Lauren Dennis, civil engineering with a dual title in climate science
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Rebecca Fleeman, biomedical sciences
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Ali Ghazvinian, architecture
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Jingyang He, materials science and engineering
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Emily Howerton, biology
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Laura Jones, ecology
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Atip Lawanprasert, bioengineering
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Flora Oswald, psychology with a dual title in women’s, gender and sexuality studies
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Siddharth Vishwanath, statistics
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Rui Wang, architecture
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Hannah Whitley, rural sociology with a dual title in human dimensions of natural resources and the environment
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Caylon Yates, ecology
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Rui Zu, materials science and engineering
To learn more about these students and the impact of their research, view the 2023 Alumni Association Dissertation Award announcement.
Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award
Ten graduate students were recognized with the Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award, which recognizes graduate teaching assistants for outstanding teaching performance:
- Cordelia Beck-Horton, master’s student in chemistry
- Maria Bermudez, doctoral student in philosophy
- Matt Cikovic, doctoral student in mass communications
- Kavya Katugam-Dechene, doctoral student in kinesiology
- Margaret Lakomy, doctoral student in chemistry
- Anna Piotti, doctoral student in German with a dual title in language science
- Ankit Saxena, doctoral student in mechanical engineering
- Tasneem Tariq, doctoral student in architecture
- Yuanheng “Arthur” Wang, doctoral student in applied linguistics
- Seongryeong Yu, doctoral student in curriculum and instruction with a dual title in comparative and international education
To learn more about these students and their teaching accomplishments, view the 2023 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award announcement.
Intercollege Graduate Student Outreach Achievement Award
Angela Cleri, doctoral student in materials science and engineering, received the Intercollege Graduate Student Outreach Achievement Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement by a student in Intercollege Graduate Degree Programs (IGDPs) who has achieved superior academic records while bringing their scholarship to the community in order to benefit society. As president of the Science Policy Society student organization, Cleri helps to develop scientific programming for the broader community. One effort she has led is Science on Tap, a monthly community outreach event in which Penn State researchers develop short presentations about their research for the general public. She also leads a podcast series for the group in which she interviews science policy professionals about their work and impact.
Graduate Student Service Award
Hamidul Haque, a master’s student in agricultural and biological engineering, received the Graduate Student Service Award, which recognizes a graduate student who has best-combined high academic achievement with leadership in University or other public activities. The award is sponsored by Penn State’s Office of Student Leadership and Involvement. Haque’s research focuses on water quality impact of sustainable agricultural waste management. He has taken on many leadership roles at Penn State, including vice president of the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Graduate Student council, a member of his department’s diversity, equity and inclusion committee, and a graduate student representative of the University Park Allocation Committee.
Professional Master’s Excellence Award
Anjali Gopalakrishnan, a master's degree student in architecture, and Sungjin Ryu, a master's student in supply chain management, were selected as recipients of the Professional Master’s Excellence Award, which recognizes the quality and impact of the student’s culminating experience, including creative works, performance and projects conducted in a professional setting.
Gopalakrishnan’s culminating experience includes several activities that focus on using design to achieve spatial equity in urban public spaces. Her experiences also include serving on a multidisciplinary team with the Strategies of Urban Livability program in Denmark, completing an internship with Perkins Eastman focused on collaborating with senior living communities to develop sustainable solutions that prioritize their health and well-being, participating in the Penn State Solar Decathlon, and conducting her own research.
Ryu’s culminating experience is a project to develop innovative pipelines for steels, battery materials and other precious metals that are needed for electric vehicles. Coming to Penn State with industry experience, Ryu, who is completing his degree online through Penn State World Campus, works for POSCO America, a South Korean based steel manufacturer. His culminating experience has been to explore ways to improve aspects of the company’s supply chain management system, and in the process of carrying out this project, he helped the company to source new materials.
Graduate Student Excellence in Mentoring Award
Victoria Bonnell, doctoral student in biochemistry, microbiology and molecular biology, is the recipient of the Graduate Student Excellence in Mentoring Award, which recognizes senior doctoral students for exemplary and effective mentoring of undergraduate and/or new or junior graduate students that contributes to the student’s personal growth, professional development and/or academic success. As a member of the Center for Eukaryotic Gene Regulation, Bonnell mentors graduate students on presentation skills, and regularly trains senior level individuals in technical research methodologies. In her graduate lab, she has trained and mentored numerous visiting graduate students and postdoc fellows from labs around the world. She also mentored a novice undergraduate researcher in all aspects of research design and methodology, and that mentee later went on to win the Peter T. Luckie Outstanding Research Award at the Undergraduate Exhibition. During her teaching assistantship, she was the recipient of the 2018-19 Paul M. Althouse Outstanding Teaching Award. Bonnell also participates regularly and conducts K-12 outreach mainly through the Graduate Women in Science organization that advocates for equity in science.
Graduate Student International Research Award
Dima Abu-Aridah, doctoral student in architecture, is the recipient of the Graduate Student International Research Award, which promotes and supports international research and scholarship by graduate students that has potential for global impact. Abu-Aridah’s research explores the design of refugee camps through social, familial, historical and spatial lenses. She is interested in understanding how refugees rearrange their public and private spaces after being settled into a camp. Using a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan as a case study, Abu-Aridah is using computational techniques to study how refugee camps and dwellings change over time, and what social pressures and policies are influencing these changes.
Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award
Four students received the Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award, which recognizes excellence in master’s-level thesis research: Patrick McFarland, master’s student in meteorology and atmospheric science; Kathleen Meeks, master’s student in neuroscience; Sam Moradzadeh, master’s student in architecture; and Abbie Robinson, master’s student in rural sociology pursuing a dual-title degree in international agriculture and development.
McFarland studies electrical discharges that form on trees under thunderstorms. Through his work, he sought to understand the impact that lightning and weaker electrical discharges have on atmospheric chemistry by quantifying their production of hydroxyl radicals, the atmosphere’s primary cleanser. His research has established electrical discharges as a potentially significant additional source of hydroxyl, upending theories in the atmospheric science community.
Meeks studies the neurological biomarkers associated with major depressive disorder. Through her research, she hopes to better understand what regions of the brain are active or inactive when someone is experiencing depressive episodes, especially for individuals who are resistant to treatments. Using a combination of functional magnetic resonance imaging and sophisticated data analysis, Meeks hopes to narrow the gap between pre-clinical and translatable neuroscience research.
Moradzadeh investigates ways to empower architects and designers with virtual and augmented reality technologies. The use of textiles in architecture is a growing field, but one challenge facing the field is that the real-world behavior of textile-based designs are difficult to predict. To address this, he built and tested a virtual reality tool that would allow people to experience the designs — and predicted behaviors — in a full-scale, 1-to-1 experience.
Robinson is studying how variability in climate affects child marriage trends in Mali, which has one of the highest proportions of child marriage in the world. She is using georeferenced demographic data, combined with high-resolution climate records, to investigate the effects of droughts or excessive rainfall on the likelihood of child marriage events.
Penn State Alumni Association Scholarship for Penn State Alumni in the Graduate School
Two graduate students — Megan Bradson, doctoral student in psychology, and Joe Brandenburg, doctoral student in school psychology — received the Penn State Alumni Association Scholarship for Penn State Alumni in the Graduate School award, which recognizes students who have been admitted to the Graduate School at Penn State and who received their undergraduate degree from the University.
Bradson is interested in translational clinical neuropsychology, and her research has focused on identifying modifiable risk and protective factors that may impact cognition or quality of life in individuals with Multiple Sclerosis to identify targets for intervention. After she obtained a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Penn State, she held a post-baccalaureate research position at the National Institutes of Health, studying the neuroscience of pain, and she entered her doctoral program with four publications. In summer 2022, Bradson was selected by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to participate in a Clinical Mentorship Program.
Brandenburg wants to address rising rates of mental health decline in children and college students. He is interested in leveraging wearable technologies to develop interventions to reduce stress and negative emotions. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, upon seeing fellow students struggling with mental health issues, Brandenburg reformulated his research agenda to focus on delivering effective evidence-based stress management strategies to students who are at risk.
Thomas and June Beaver Fund Award
Akshay Pradip Gharpure, doctoral student in energy and mineral engineering, is the recipient of the Thomas and June Beaver Fund Award, which provides recognition and financial assistance to outstanding graduate students enrolled at Penn State who are performing industrially sponsored research. Gharpure is interested in developing new ways to obtain graphite-based materials needed for energy storage. As a student, he has worked on several industry-sponsored projects exploring the development and commercialization of novel hydrocarbon conversion technologies. Projects focused on transforming unconventional materials into high-value carbon products with improved properties; improving the electrical, thermal and mechanical properties of resins and pitches; improving the quality of tars, pitches and other products obtained from coal using plasma reactor processes; and upcycling plastic waste materials into graphite.
Harold K. Schilling Dean’s Graduate Scholarship
Two students — Desirae Major, doctoral student in aerospace engineering, and Xiaoyue Zhao, doctoral student in mechanical engineering — received the Harold Schilling Dean’s Graduate Scholarship, which recognizes outstanding graduate students whose course of study is relevant to science, religion and ethics, or whose studies involve critical societal benefits such as improvement of health, environment or energy.
Major is exploring ways to design offshore wind farms that are cost-effective as an alternative to carbon-based fuels. A trend in windfarm development is the increasing size of the turbines, which provides more power. A larger size creates more structural fatigue, and Major is trying to develop ways to optimize turbine design to account for size and efficiency. Major has presented her work at multiple international wind energy conferences and is also a member of Penn State’s Collegiate Wind Energy student team.
Zhao studies alternative methods of harvesting energy for medical and electronic devices. She is looking at ways to develop and design materials that can harvest electricity by the fact that they contact with each other. This new energy harvesting technology, known as triboelectric nanogeneration, can serve as flexible, portable, cost effective and light power sources for devices. Zhao’s dissertation research is focused on understanding the effect of material properties on the triboelectric behavior of polymer and its composite.
AT&T Graduate Fellowship
Sujay Hosur, doctoral student in electrical engineering, is the recipient of the AT&T Graduate Fellowship, which recognizes outstanding Penn State graduate students who are conducting research in wireless data applications. Hosur is investigating the design and development of circuits and systems needed for implantable medical devices that have beneficial health applications, such as a neural stimulators, and spinal cord implants to help patients recover from injuries and regain motor abilities. Hosur’s research focuses on ways to wirelessly power these devices and securely communicate with them using magnetic fields and ultrasound.
Ardeth and Norman Frisbey International Student Award
Ram Neupane, doctoral student in plant pathology with a dual title degree in international agriculture and development, received the Ardeth and Norman Frisbey International Student Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to international understanding by graduate/undergraduate international students. This award is administered and sponsored by Penn State Global. Neupane’s research focuses on improving food security globally. As a graduate student, he has served in many leadership roles, including vice president of International Agriculture and Development Graduate Student Association (INTAD GSA). Neupane was selected to be in the inaugural cohort of the Young Scientists Group at the World Food Forum and the Food and Agriculture Organization, and he serves as co-chair of the Policy and Advocacy Working Group of Young Professional for Agriculture Development.
Nominations for 2023-24 graduate student awards will be due in the fall 2023 semester. For more information, visit the Graduate School’s student awards webpage.