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Fellowships & Scholarships

Tandon Faculty First Look Fellowship

The NYU Tandon School of Engineering invites scholars currently underrepresented in engineering fields who are nearing completion of their doctorates or who are in post-doctoral positions to apply for Tandon Faculty First Look Fellowships.

Fellows will have the opportunity to present and receive feedback on their ongoing research, engage with NYU faculty from a range of engineering disciplines, and participate in workshops designed to help them advance their careers.

The Tandon Faculty First Look program will be held via Zoom on Friday, March 12, 2021, 10 AM – 4:30 PM.    

Eligibility

Eligible participants include doctoral degree candidates and post-doctoral fellows working in fields represented by NYU Tandon’s faculty, departments, and research centers. Women and applicants of African-American, Latinx, American Indian, or Alaskan Native descent, and people with disabilities are particularly encouraged to apply.

How to Apply

Interested candidates will submit the following (as individual documents) when the application process is open: 

  1. Personal Statement: to include career aspirations, your contribution to diversity and inclusion in the Academy, anticipated dissertation completion date, and why participating in NYU Tandon’s Faculty First Look will help you achieve your goals. Maximum 750-word count
  2. Dissertation Abstract: maximum 250-word count
  3. Curriculum Vitae
  4. Letter of Recommendation from dissertation advisor, verifying anticipated dissertation date
  5. Supplemental Form

Application deadline is December 15, 2020. Please submit materials electronically through Interfolio.

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Announcements

Ph.D. Student Harnoor Singh Sachar Selected as Finalist For Frank J. Padden, Jr. Award

news story image
Harnoor Singh Sachar

Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student, Harnoor Singh Sachar, has been selected as a finalist for the Frank J. Padden, Jr. Award sponsored by the College of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Akron. As a finalist, Sachar will present his research in the 2021 Padden Award Symposium organized by the Division of Polymer Physics of the American Physical Society. Selection in this global competition demonstrates “Excellence in Polymer Physics Research” by a graduate student, and typically only five students are named finalists each year.

Sachar works with Associate Professor Siddhartha Das in the Soft Matter, Interfaces, and Energy Laboratory (SMIEL). He joined Das’s research group as an M.S. student fall of 2017 and transitioned to the Ph.D. program fall of 2018.

His Ph.D. thesis focuses on “Atomistic and theoretical description of liquid flows in polyelectrolyte-brush-grafted nanochannels.”

Polyelectrolyte (PE) molecules that are grafted to a surface in close proximity to each other form a brush-like structure—similar to the bristles of a toothbrush. Das and Sachar have performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to probe the microstructure of PE brushes in an unprecedented atomistic fashion. From there, they are expanding on this work by investigating the response of hydrophilic PE brushes to changes in temperature, and their results indicate that the “water-in-salt” like behavior of the PE brush-counterion-water system is amplified at higher temperatures.

This research could be useful for the future development of new polymer-based “water-in-salt” electrolytes for battery applications.

Sachar is currently utilizing MD simulations to quantify the weakening of hydrogen bond network formed by water molecules inside the water-swollen PE brushes, and the research findings of this work will be presented at the Padden Award Symposium in March 2021.

Sachar has published over 20 peer-reviewed journal articles in journals such as Soft Matter, Applied Physics Letters, Matter, and Physics of Fluids. In addition, Sachar has been recognized for his academic and research work with awards such as the UMD Graduate School Outstanding Research Assistant Award, the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers, Philadelphia Section Scholarship and the Clark School of Engineering Future Faculty Fellowship.

https://enme.umd.edu/news/story/phd-student-harnoor-singh-sachar-selected-as-finalist-for-frank-j-padden-jr-award

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Announcements

Dropping a Graduate Course or Withdrawing from all Courses

On November 16, the Provost emailed all students announcing that the deadline to withdraw from a course has been extended to November 30 to provide students who have been profoundly impacted by the pandemic conditions with more flexibility.  In considering your options, it is important that graduate students and program advisors understand the potential implications of withdrawing from a course (or an entire semester) so they can work together to make an informed decision.

When you register for a course, a seat is taken. Dropping after the end of the schedule adjustment period means that someone on the waiting list was unable to take the course. For this reason, the cost of a dropped course is charged to the student. If you received tuition remission as a result of a graduate assistantship or a tuition award in addition to your fellowship, you may incur tuition charges if you drop a course or withdraw from all courses. 

Withdrawl from all courses

Unless you are granted a leave of absence, withdrawal from all classes will result in termination of admission and withdrawal from the University. 

Graduate Assistantships

  • The assistantship stipend ceases.
  • Assistantship benefits (health, tuition remission) terminate.
  • The tuition remission will charge back to the student’s account and the student will be responsible for the cost of courses taken according to the Office of the Registrar schedule attached below.

Fellowships

  • The fellowship stipend may be rescinded.
  • Any associated tuition award will be revoked and the student will be responsible for the cost of courses taken according to the Office of the Registrar schedule linked below.

Dropping a Course

The key consideration is whether full-time status is retained after the course is dropped.

Graduate Assistantships

  • Graduate Assistants must retain full-time status during the period of the assistantship. See here for the requirements for full-time status.
  • When receiving assistantship tuition remission, dropping a course may result in a charge to the student’s account for the percentage of the refund not covered.

Fellowships

  • If the fellowship requires full-time status (48 units), dropping a course may result in the fellowship being rescinded.
  • When receiving an associated tuition award, dropping a course may result in a charge to the student’s account for the percentage of the refund not covered.

Graduate Students – Refund Schedule for Drops

Graduate students may obtain refunds for courses that are dropped during the Schedule Adjustment Period. Students may drop and add courses without penalty provided that the changes are made on the same day and that the total number of credits does not change. Graduate students are charged by the credit hour. A percentage charge and/or complete charge will be imposed according to the schedule below:

  • Prior to the first day of classes: 100% refund. There will be no charge for courses dropped prior to this date.
  • During the Schedule Adjustment Period: 80% refund. There will be a 20% charge imposed for courses dropped during this period.
  • Any time after the Schedule Adjustment Period: 0% refund. There will be no refund; students incur the full charge for courses dropped during this period.

For related questions, please first consult the program’s Director/Coordinator of Graduate Studies (DGS/CGS) and then, if necessary, University Human Resources Benefits (for assistantships), or The Graduate School (for fellowships).

REFUND SCHEDULE

Dropping courses or withdrawing may impact your financial aid eligibility.  Visit the Office of the Registrar’s page of academic deadlines for dropping a course or withdrawing from all courses.  For related questions about refunds, contact the Office of Student Financial Aid.

Categories
Fellowships & Scholarships

NREL Internship Opportunity and Solar Decathlon Mentor Program

We are reaching out to share an exciting internship opportunity as a Student Design Competition Intern at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. This will be a full-time, one-year, paid position, and the successful candidate will support various NREL efforts and projects, including support to student competitions in building science; domestic technical assistance programs to federal partners; and projects focused on building science.

Candidates must be enrolled full-time in a bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D. degree program, or have graduated in the past 12 months from an accredited institution. The preferred candidate will be a master’s degree student in building science, hold an engineering or architecture undergraduate degree, and have experience as a student in the Solar Decathlon, Solar District Cup, or other buildings student design competition. More details about the opportunity can be found here.

We are also still accepting applicants to our Solar Decathlon Mentor Program! The Mentor Program will pair Solar Decathlon alumni with 2021 Design Challenge teams. Mentors will provide up to 15 hours of support to student teams during the competition period from November 2020–April 2021. Mentors will develop leadership skills, earn recognition on the Solar Decathlon social media channels, receive a certificate from the U.S. Department of Energy, and be invited to virtually participate in the Solar Decathlon Competition Event in April 2021.

We look forward to seeing some of our 2020 Design Challenge alumni apply for the internship opportunity and become Solar Decathlon mentors!

Thank you,
Zac Peterson and the Solar Decathlon Organizers
SDdesign@nrel.gov
Solar Decathlon Website

Categories
Workshops, Seminars, & Events

ORISE Virtual Info Seminars

The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) is hosting a series of monthly webinars highlighting the 700-plus STEM, technical, and policy internships and fellowships available through ORISE at federal facilities nationwide! Opportunities are available in a variety of fields for college students, recent graduates, postdocs, and faculty.

Join us for one of these upcoming virtual info sessions:
November 18, 2020, 2 p.m. ET
December 16, 2020, 2 p.m. ET
January 20, 2021, 2 p.m. ET

Register Today!

If you have any questions, please contact Ask-A-Recruiter@orau.org.

Categories
Defenses

Thesis Defense: Sriram Jayanthi

Title: Underfill Selection to Improve Solder Joint Reliability For Down Hole Drilling Applications

Author: Sriram Jayanthi

Date/Time: November 19, 2020 10:00am-12:00pm

Examining Committee:

  • Professor Patrick McCluskey, Chair
  • Professor Abhijit Dasgupta
  • Dr. Michael Azarian

Abstract: Underfill materials were originally developed to improve the solder joint reliability of the BGA packages under the thermal cycling when they are experiencing stresses due to the CTE mismatches between the board and the component. Although it is stated that the underfills will improve the shock reliability of the solder joints under the harsh environment for automobiles and military applications (-40 to 125oC). It has been found in the thermal cycling conditions the underfills will reduce the life of the solder balls. All the studies that had been performed were mostly below 150oC. There are no certain guidelines for selecting the underfills with the properties of the materials.  The main aim of this research is to create a guideline for selecting the underfills for high-temperature applications (above 150oC) for different BGA packages. In the first section, initial characterization and benchmarking of the underfills that are available in the industry was performed. In the second section, all the selected underfills were subjected to a harsh environment to find failure modes and mechanisms. With the help of experimentation and FEA that was done, guidelines were created for selecting the underfills for different BGA packages. This will be helpful to oil & gas and military applications.

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Workshops, Seminars, & Events

Tale of Two Pandemics: Illuminating Structural Racism and COVID

Powered by Research Commons at University Libraries. Starting in 2015, the Interdisciplinary Dialogues have addressed such important issues as income inequality, immigration, social media and elections, and sex and gender in academia. Please note that all Fall 2020 events will be held virtually via Zoom. Registrants will receive an event link in their confirmation email.

As the United States faces a global COVID-19 pandemic that has killed over 200,000 and confronts longtime and systemic racism and violence against Black Americans, researchers have highlighted a clear intersection between structural racism and high risk situations for contracting COVID. By drawing from research expertise, this panel explores the concurrent pandemics of racism and COVID, causes of inequity, and ways in which our community can address them.  

Panelists include:

Dr. Rashawn Ray, Professor of Sociology, Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR)
 Twitter

Dr. Jennifer Roberts, Assistant Professor, Kinesiology, Director of Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory
Twitter

Amelia Jamison, MAA, MPH, Faculty Research Affiliate at the Maryland Center for Health Equity, PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
 Twitter

John P. Salerno, MPH, PhD Candidate, Behavioral and Community Health, Investigator at the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center (UMD-PRC)
 Twitter

Related LibGuide: COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Resources by Nedelina Tchangalova

Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Time: 3:00pm – 4:00pm

Audience:

Faculty/Staff   General Public   Graduate Students   Undergraduate Students  

Registration is required. There are 38 seats available.

Register here.

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Fellowships & Scholarships Jobs/Internships

Internship Opportunity – Seagate Technology

There is an exciting internship opportunity for the Spring of 2021 at Seagate Technology, a hard drive manufacturing company. In this internship, the intern will get a chance to work on real-world machinery data, and industry 4.0 related projects. 
Here are the preferred qualifications: 

  • Current master or PhD students in mechanical engineering.
  • Solid programming experience in Python, Keras, Tensorflow, Flask and/or Django.
  • Deep understanding and experience in machine learning/deep learning: time-series analysis, CNN and RNN, unsupervised methods.
  • Experience in design of experiment and prognostics and health management. 
  • Experience in GIT, Docker container, Kubernetes, AWS, microservices is preferred.  

Interested applicants can send their CV directly to Ramin Moradi (raminmrd@umd.edu). 

Categories
Announcements Workshops, Seminars, & Events

Virtual Technical Meeting: Exploring Data Requirements for Risk and Reliability Analysis in Hydrogen Systems

Presenters: Camila Correa Jullian & Katrina Groth

Host: University of Maryland

Date/Time: November 17, 2020. 11:00AM EDT

Risk and reliability analysis are critical to the development of safe
systems, designing maintenance strategies, and creating codes and
standards. We are exploring the suitability of modern tools for risk
assessment, such as QRA (Quantitative Risk Assessment), and reliability
analysis, such as PHM (Prognosis and Health Management), in hydrogen
systems. Both have the potential to close knowledge gaps from different
perspectives and enable H2 infrastructure deployment.
This technical meeting will address common data requirements for QRA
and PHM in hydrogen systems, with a focus on identifying data sources
with potential to enable research to close knowledge gaps.

Topical Discussion Points:

  • QRA data needs: Component failure and event frequency data on hydrogen systems and components.
  • PHM data needs: Condition-monitoring data-based methods to explore PHM-informed risk-mitigation measures.
  • Engage with researchers with hydrogen stakeholders for collaboration and data sharing.

To confirm attendance: https://bit.ly/32jnszj

For more info, please contact Kevin Hartmann Kevin.Hartmann2@nrel.gov orKatrina Groth
kgroth@umd.edu

Categories
Defenses

Dissertation Defense – Guanjin Wang

Title: Physics-Based and Data-Driven Modeling of Hybrid Robot Movement on Soft Terrain

Author: Guanjin Wang

Advisory Committee:

  • Professor Balakumar Balachandran, Chair & Advisor
  • Associate Professor Amir Riaz (Co-Advisor)
  • Professor Teng Li
  • Professor Amr Baz
  • Professor Peter Chung
  • Professor Derek Richardson (Dean’s Representative)

Date & Time: November 13, 2020 2pm-4pm

Abstract: Navigating the unmapped environment is one of the ten biggest challenges facing the robotics community. A vision-based navigation system embedded in the mobile robot can only help to negotiate obstacles, which are well described by geometrical features, like sharp-edged stones and rocks.  Other aspects like sand, snow, and challenging terrains, are challenges for motions that robots cannot avoid during missions. Thus, designing and selecting effective gaits to navigate over terrains that may not be well describable by geometry is crucial for robot exploration. Wheeled robots can move fast on flat surfaces but suffer from loss of traction and immobility on soft ground. However, legged machines have superior mobility over wheeled locomotion when they are in motion over flowable ground or a terrain with obstacles but can only move at relatively low speeds on flat surfaces. A question is: If legged and wheeled locomotion are combined, can the resulting hybrid leg-wheel locomotion enable fast movement in any terrain condition?

Investigations into vehicle terrain interaction fall in the area of terramechanics. Traditional terra-mechanics theory can help capture large wheel vehicle interaction with the ground. However, legged or hybrid locomotion on a granular substrate is difficult to investigate by using classical empirical terra-mechanics theory due to sharp-edge contact. Recent studies show the continuum simulation can serve as an accurate tool for simulating dynamic interactions with granular material at laboratory and field scales. Therefore, to investigate the rich physics during dynamic interactions between the robot and the granular terrain, a computational framework based on the Smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method has been developed and validated by using experimental results for single robot appendage interaction with the granular system. This framework has been extended and coupled with a multi-body simulator to model different robot configurations. Encouraging agreement is found amongst the numerical, theoretical, and experimental results, for a wide range of robot leg configurations, such as curvature and shape. The sensitive dependence of robot performance on different gaits has been investigated by parametric space exploration.

The above mentioned physics-based simulation can serve as a high-fidelity tool to uncover clues about the underlying mechanism of dynamic interactions between robots and soft terrain. However, real-time navigation in a challenging terrain requires fast prediction of the dynamic response of the robot, which is useful for terrain identification and robot gait adaption. Therefore, a data-driven modeling framework has also been developed for the fast estimation of the slippage and sinkage of robots. The data-driven model leverages the high-quality data generated from the offline physics-based simulation for the training of a deep neural network founded on long short-term memory (LSTM) cells. The results are expected to form a good basis for online robot navigation and exploration in unknown and complex terrains.