Buckeye engineers receive Presidential Fellowships

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Dong-Yeop Na (left) and Justin Eldridge (right) are two of the most recent Buckeye engineers to receive Presidential Fellowships.
Three Buckeye engineers—Justin Eldridge, Alexander Marras and Dong-Yeop Na—were recently awarded Presidential Fellowships, The Ohio State University Graduate School's most prestigious honor.

These scholars join the ranks of seven spring engineering recipients—Shubhendu Bhardwaj, Richard Dehner, Mariantonieta Gutierrez Soto, Sen Li, Yue Qiao, Hamed Rahimian and Unnikrishnan Sasidharan Nair.

The fellowship recognizes the outstanding scholarly accomplishments and potential of graduate students entering the final phase of their dissertation research or terminal degree project.

Justin Eldridge is currently pursuing a PhD in computer science and conducting research in machine learning. Eldridge is identifying and designing practical algorithms that can recover clusters of data along with his advisors Mikhail Belkin and Yusu Wang, both professors of computer science and engineering.

As a PhD candidate in mechanical and aerospace engineering, Alexander Marras is working with Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professors Carlos Castro and Hai-Jun Su. His research focuses on developing a framework for building and controlling mechanical nanomachines using DNA. This design could be useful for biosensing, nanomaufacturing and triggered delivery application.

Dong-Yeop Na is an electrical engineering PhD candidate using computer algorithms to study electromagnetic phenomena. He is focusing on solving dynamics of charged particles such as electrons and ions. These dynamics have many practical applications such as high-power microwave sources. Na is mentored by Fernando Teixeira, professor of electrical and computer engineering.  

Shubhendu Bhardwaj is a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering, co-advised by Electrical and Computer Engineering Professors John Volakis and Siddharth Rajan. His research areas include electromagnetics and multi-physical modeling, HEMT modeling for terahertz operation, antenna guiding and slow-wave structure designs, as well as plasmon electronics in 2D electron-gas systems.

As a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering, Richard Dehner, develops numerical, experimental and computational studies of turbochargers and internal combustion engines. Advised by Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Ahmet Selamet, his research studies compression system surge instabilities.

Mariantonieta Gutierrez Soto is a civil engineering PhD student, focusing on intelligent resilient infrastructure. Her research strives to make civil structures safer against natural disasters and opens the pathways for investigation of the next generations of sustainable smart structures that are significantly more resilient against natural disasters. Gutierrez Soto is advised Hojjat Adeli, professor of civil engineering.

Sen Li is pursuing a doctoral degree in electrical engineering. His research interests include control and planning of hybrid and stochastic dynamic systems and their application in various engineering fields, especially electric vehicles, ancillary market and energy systems. He is advised by Wei Zhang, professor electrical and computer engineering.

Hamed Rahimian is a PhD student in integrated systems engineering. Focusing on stochastic optimization, data-driven optimization, and distributionally robust stochastic programming with applications in water resources management, his research is advised by Industrial and Systems Engineering Associate Professor Güzin Bayraksan.

Unnikrishnan Sasidharan Nair, a PhD candidate in aerospace engineering, conducts research on the identification of noise-source mechanisms in aircraft exhaust jets. He plans to extend the current work on cold jets to realistic aircraft exhaust configurations and further suggest control techniques to mitigate noise levels. Sasidharan Nair is advised by Aerospace Engineering Professor Datta Gaitonde.

Yue Qiao is a PhD student in computer science and engineering, co-advised by Computer Science and Engineering Professors Anish Arora and Kannan Srinivasan. Researching security in mobile and wireless networks, she is working on exploiting physical layer characteristics of the wireless channel to protect or attack wireless protocols.

The financial support provided by the fellowship enables students to devote one year of full-time study to the completion of a dissertation or degree project. Academic tuition and fee are also paid, along with a travel allowance to help the student attend dissertation presentations and conferences during the fellowship timeframe.


by Emily Lehmkuhl, College of Engineering student communications assistant