Five engineering graduate students recognized as Presidential Fellows

Five Buckeye engineers have earned the highest honor given by The Ohio State University Graduate School—a Presidential Fellowship.

This award honors the outstanding scholarly accomplishments and potential of graduate students entering the final phase of their dissertation research or terminal degree project.

The College of Engineering’s 2018-2019 Presidential Fellows are Ehsan Akbari, Christopher Bobba, Hugo Gonzalez Villasanti, Hoda Hatoum and Fei Wu.

Ehsan Akbari is a PhD student in mechanical engineering whose work centers on vascular health. His dissertation involves the combined experimental and computational study of how blood flow induces stress in endothelial cells, especially at locations where blood vessels divide in two. Such stress is at the heart of many diseases, and Akbari’s in vitro lab-on-a-chip system allows systematic study of this important issue. His advisor is Professor Jonathan Song.

Chris Bobba is a fifth year student in the Medical Scientist Training Program pursuing his MD and PhD degrees and is currently performing his graduate dissertation work in biomedical engineering. His work focuses on the role of the alveolar macrophage, the resident immune cells of the lung, in the development of ventilator-induced lung injury, which affects patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. Bobba’s research will likely have broad implications as mechanical forces play a role in other lung diseases such as asthma, pulmonary fibrosis and cancer. His co-advisors are Biomedical Engineering Chair-elect Samir Ghadiali and Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine Joshua Englert.

Hugo Gonzalez Villasanti is a PhD student in electrical and computer engineering whose area of research involves feedback control for mental health. Focusing on major depressive disorder, his research will develop a framework for the development of technology-assisted neural and sensory stimulation therapies for mood disorders. His main objectives are to provide robust guarantees under uncertain features of the illness, as well as scalability by adapting to intra-personal and inter-personal variabilities in brain responses. His advisor is Professor Kevin Passino.

Hoda Hatoum is a mechanical engineering PhD candidate. Advised by Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Lakshmi Prasad Dasi, Hatoum is studying the fluid mechanics of transcatheter heart valves through assessing the impact of implantation on physiological flows and pressure conditions, in addition to its engendered turbulence. Her research constitutes a base for better medical device manufacturing and implementation of surgery guidelines, primarily affecting patients’ quality of life.

Fei Wu is a computer science and engineering PhD candidate whose research involves wireless multicasting, a technique that is useful when multiple nodes are interested in the same content. Wireless multicasting has largely remained impractical due to the feedback overhead required for a successful implementation. Wu has developed a design that uses a moving window technique to code multiple packets together that requires a simple feedback from a set of users, enabling wireless multicasting to be a reality. His co-advisors are Professors Ness B. Shroff and Kannan Srinivasan.

Awarded competitively, Presidential Fellowships provide one year of full-time financial support so students can complete their dissertations or terminal degree projects unimpeded by other duties. Competitions are held during autumn and spring semesters.

by Meggie Biss, College of Engineering Communications | biss.11@osu.edu