Graduate School

Thirteen graduate students honored with Alumni Association Dissertation Award

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Thirteen graduate students received the Alumni Association Dissertation Award, one of the most prestigious awards given to doctoral candidates at the University. The award was made possible through a gift from the Penn State Alumni Association and provides funding and recognition to outstanding full-time research doctorate students who have passed their comprehensive examinations and have received approval of their dissertation topic. The award, comprised of a certificate and a medal, is considered to be among the most prestigious available to Penn State graduate students, and recognizes outstanding professional accomplishment and achievement in scholarly research in any of the disciplinary areas

Students receiving the award in 2023 include:

Lauren Dennis, Civil Engineering with a Dual Title in Climate Science

Dennis seeks to understand the ways in which vulnerabilities of natural and built systems could affect future hydropower generation and the management of the supply and demand of electricity within the grid. This work is motivated by the increasing importance of hydropower as a flexible resource that can be quickly turned on and off and store energy, as more renewable energy resources replace the fossil energy resources that have traditionally provided flexibility to the grid. She uses tools from climate science, network science and social science to undertake a systems-level analysis of risk to hydropower for the entire U.S., seeking to inform future hydropower planning and grid management as utilities respond to climate impacts and work towards decarbonization.

Rebecca Fleeman, Biomedical Sciences

Fleeman seeks to improve treatment options for Alzheimer’s disease, a devastating neurodegenerative disease manifesting that affects more than 6.2 million Americans. Fleeman’s work focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease alter metabolic and immune signaling at the cellular, tissue, and whole-system levels. There are no curative therapeutics available to patients living with Alzheimer’s disease, and Fleeman hopes her research can help to overcome this. Findings from her work have made considerable advances, including identifying connections between full-body metabolism and immune signaling in the brain to genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. 

Ali Ghazvinian, Architecture

Ghazvinian studies the use of mycelium-based composites in building construction to reduce waste and pollution associated with traditional building materials such as plastic and concrete. Mycelium-based composites are derived from mushrooms and would provide for a sustainable material, the materials could be produced to sustain specific strengths and environmental conditions. However, these materials need special preparation to be useful in buildings. Ghazvinian’s dissertation work seeks to build a proof-of-concept functional prototype for this type of building material, to educate others and accelerate the adoption of these sustainable building materials. Read more about Ghazvinian here

Jingyang He, Materials Science and Engineering

He’s research focuses on designing and discovering optical crystals for lasers, which could have applications to advance medical technology, environmental monitoring, and quantum optics. As a doctoral student working with the 2D Crystal Consortium at Penn State, He has identified five promising materials and proven that they are applicable for infrared laser systems. These materials will have a broad impact on the fundamental science in the fields of synthesis techniques, optics and computational science, which will provide insight into the structure-property relationship and guide future nonlinear optical materials discovery.

Emily Howerton, Biology

Howerton’s research focuses on how to make better decisions during pandemics, in which decision-makers must deal with high levels of uncertainty. She developed methods to integrate the many sources of uncertainty in a pandemic, including aggregating the results of numerous models to improve accuracy and reliability. Several methods she developed are now in use by the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub to provide six-month ahead projections to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and other public health decision-makers. By improving the science of infectious disease projections, Howerton hopes her research will help improve public health emergency responses. 

Laura Jones, Ecology

Jones investigates the impacts of temperature changes and pathogens on wild bee pollinators in squash and pumpkin agricultural ecosystems. Jones has been able to identify key traits in bees and pathogens that better predict disease transmission outcomes, as well as infer how bees are responding to temperature across spatial scales. This work is vital for ensuring the future of ecosystem functioning and food security. Jones works with stakeholders in agriculture to identify management practices that reduce pathogen pressure or temperature stress for wild bees on their farms. By partnering with stakeholders, Jones hopes that her research findings will help support both grower livelihoods and wild bee health across the region. Read more about Jones here.

Atip Lawanprasert, Bioengineering

Lawanprasert’s research focuses on understanding interactions between inert perfluoroalkyl substance  compounds and biomolecules, like proteins or peptides. He seeks to understand how these environmentally toxic compounds, sometimes referred to as “forever chemicals,” affect the health of lifeforms that surround them. Lawanprasert also seeks to use these compounds to benefit society, such as using them to develop an inhalable COVID vaccine. He hopes that his work can open new doors for these materials to find uses to improve medicine and other areas of society.

The bioengineering program is now called the biomedical engineering program.

Flora Oswald, Psychology with a dual title in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Oswald’s research focuses on understanding how people with marginalized social identities perceive and experience their social worlds. She uses vision science methods to understand what features of the environment attract attention and prompt feelings of threat, or feelings of belonging, among people with marginalized identities. Her research focuses specifically on individuals with marginalized bodies, and she also studied how this intersected with other aspects of identity such as race and gender. She hopes that her work can identify potential spaces for intervention to reduce social and health disparities and improve well-being among marginalized group members.

Siddharth Vishwanath, Statistics

Vishwanath seeks to develop new ways to understand large and complicated sets of data resulting from new technologies like the Internet of Things, which are often too complex to study using traditional statistical methods. His research focuses specifically on topological data analysis, which explores the geometric shapes that a data set can take. Incorporating visualization into his work has created new insight and helped him to develop methods that reduce sensitivity to noise in data. He hopes that this work can result in innovative tools and techniques for analyzing data in a range of fields, including medicine and cosmology.

Rui Wang, Architecture

Wang studies green landscape design, which uses plants and other green infrastructure for stormwater drainage and other improvements to communities. Although city designers have used these types of design approaches widely, there is little research into public perceptions of their potential benefits. Wang’s research seeks to bridge this gap and develop an inclusive process in landscape architectural design. This work can help to identify ways to promote people’s quality of life and well-being in urban settings. Read more about Wang here

Hannah Whitley, Rural Sociology with a dual title in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment

Whitley studies human dimensions of natural resources and the environment and the sociology of food and agriculture. Her dissertation, funded by a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Pre-doctoral Fellowship, examines the attempt to build collaborative solutions to water scarcity in the Klamath Basin, a watershed traversing the Oregon-California border undergoing historical conflict and water governance changes. Her research identifies how power manifests a water governance organization and shows how power disparities can lead to inequities for stakeholders. Whitley hopes her findings will inform how governance authorities can create and sustain more effective and equitable approaches to addressing environmental and natural resource issues.

Caylon Yates, Ecology

Yates studies a group of fungi, mycorrhizal fungi, which form partnerships with nearly all plants and are responsible for the acquisition of key plant nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorous, from the soil in exchange for carbon from the plant partner. Globally, mycorrhizal fungi can signal the health and nutrient cycles of entire ecosystems. Yates’ work examines how these fungi shape the function and structure of forest soil microbiomes at multiple scales. Yates hopes that his work will help to contribute to improving global biodiversity programs. Read more about Yates here

Rui Zu, Materials Science and Engineering

Zu’s research focuses on nonlinear optical materials that are used in lasers today but could have applications in other technologies. He developed an open-source software package that scientists from interdisciplinary fields can use to precisely analyze these materials with complex properties, which has remained a challenging task for nearly seven decades. The software, called ♯SHAARP, models both linear and nonlinear optical responses of materials, and this can be used by materials researchers to identify new or more effective materials for optical applications. Zu has already found new potential materials to explore using the software he developed, and he is making it available to the materials community widely to empower others.  

The Alumni Association Dissertation Award is part of Penn State's annual graduate student awards, which recognize graduate students who demonstrate excellence in teaching, research, service, and other academic activities. For more information, visit the 2023 graduate student award recipient announcement.

Last Updated May 1, 2023

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