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2023 Awards Recipients

  • Best M.S. Thesis: Yinan Yang, "Influences of Anions' Solvation on Charge Storage Performance and Mechanism of Poly(phenothiazine) Cathode."
  • Best Ph.D. Thesis: Aliaksei Aliakseyeu, "Star Polymers in Solution and Multilayer Assemblies." 
  • Best Ph.D. Thesis: Adelaide Bradicich, "Electrothermally-Induced Spatial Inhomogeneities in Nonlinear Electronic Materials." 
  • Best Paper, Graduate Student: Vrushali Kotasthane, "Selective Etching of Ti3AlC2 MAX Phases Using Quaternary Ammonium Fluorides Directly Yields Ti3C2TzMXene Nanosheets: Implications for Energy Storage."  
  • Entrepreneurship: Tasya Nasoetion, recognized for her work on the Electrochemo-Mechanical (ECM) Coupling Characterization Device and a developing sustainable technology.
  • Excellence in Teaching: Guillermo Vazquez, recognized for his outstanding performance as a teaching assistant in MSEN 210-Thermodynamics for Materials Science.
  • Excellence in Teaching: Junho Moon, recognized for his outstanding performance as a teaching assistant in MSEN 360-Materials Characterization and the polymers section of MSEN 301-Unifed Materials Lab I.
  • Excellence in Outreach: Tasya Nasoetion, for her leadership in Student Engineers' Council and her work in materials science and engineering graduate research outreach to undergraduate students, external industry and government agencies.

2022 Awards Recipients


2021 Awards Recipients


2020 Awards Recipients 


2019 Awards Recipients 

  • Best M.S. Thesis - This award was split between two students:
    • Reece Goldsberry, "Electrochemical Evaluation of Self-Healing Epoxy Coated Rebar in Simulated Concrete Pore Solution".
    • Joshua Hope, "Exfoliation and Morphological Evolution from Graphite to Graphene in Compacted Reactors".
  • Best Ph.D. Thesis: Behrouz Haghgouyan, "Materials Design Under Bayesian Uncertainty Quantification".
  • Best Paper Graduate Student - This award was split between two students:
  • Entrepreneurship: Jaylen James was recognized for his participation in the Aggies Invent competition in 2017, his involvement in the Entrepreneurship in Chile study abroad trip and his team’s startup Xplosion Technology winning the speed pitch competition at South by Southwest in March, among other endeavors.
  • Excellence in Outreach - This award was split between two students:
    • Hanna Hlushko was recognized for her work with Women in Materials Science, leading a team of undergraduates under the Aggie Research Leadership Program to work with her in the lab, volunteering as a moderator to facilitate the discussion at a workshop for graduate students titled Mentoring Undergraduate Researchers and many other outreach activities.
    • Arash Shadravan was recognized for serving as the president of NACE student chapter, initiating the NACE Industry Lecture Series, and executed the first Corrosion and Materials Reliability Symposium at Texas A&M-RELLIS.
  • Excellence in Teaching- This award was split between several students: 
    • Adwait Gaikwad
    • Wahaz Nasim
    • Oscar Huang
    • Jahanzaib Malik
    • Evan Prehn
    • Dimitrios Loufakis

 2018 Awards Recipients

  • Best M.S. Thesis: Tung Yan (Esther) Liu, Atomistic Simulations of the Viscoelastic Response of a Model Single-Crystal Equiatomic Solid Solution
  • Best Ph.D. Thesis: Brandon Sweeney, Electromagnetic Energy Coupled to Nanomaterial Composites for Polymer Manufacturing
  • Best Paper, Graduate Student: Tianyu (Kelvin) Yuan, Tunable Thermochromism of Multifunctional Charge-Transfer-Based Supramolecular Materials Assembled in Water
  • Best Paper, Post-Doc: Ian McCue, Gaining New Insights into Nanoporous Gold by Mining and Analysis of Published Images
  • Entrepreneurship: Mike Liu for opening his own online marketplace to help develop his entrepreneurial acumen as well as provide funding for future business endeavors specifically online business applications, real estate investing, and stock investing.
  • Excellence in Outreach - This award was split between two students:
    • Olga Eliseeva for her outstanding involvement in many outreach activities in the department, university, and in professional societies, enhancing the visibility of our department and Texas A&M including acting President of Materials Advantage and Student Board Member of ASM International.
    • Timothy Brown for his involvement with mentoring and promoting education of UG materials engineers and commitment to broader impacts which has earned him an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
  • Excellence in Teaching - This award was split between two students:
    • Mengying Liu for her outstanding teaching in MSEN 620: Kinetic Processes in Materials. She organized a weekly review session where she would go over homework and test problems with students from the class and helped those struggling pull ahead, earning respect and gratitude from her peers.
    • Jaskirat Batra for his outstanding teaching in MEEN/MSEN 222. Jaskirat actively worked to enhance student educational experience, and launched a Virtual-Reality based learning module for this purpose.

2017 Awards Recipients

  • Best M.S. Thesis: Nayan Chaudhary for his M.S. thesis, "A Data-Driven Machine Learning Approach to Predicting Stacking Fault Energy in Austenitic Steels".
  • Best Ph.D. Thesis: Sneha Chawla for her Ph.D. thesis, "Microstructure-mechanical Property Relationships in Carbon Nanofibers".
  • Best Paper, Graduate Student: Hua Wang for his paper, "Two-dimensional multiferroics in monolayer group IV monochalcogenides" published in 2D Materials.
  • Best Paper, Post-Doc: Dr. Fernando Soto for his paper, "Tuning the Solid Electrolyte Interphase for Selective Li- and Na-ion Storage in Hard Carbon," published in Advanced Materials.
  • Excellence in Outreach: Victoria Albright for her outstanding work in materials science and engineering outreach in the College of Engineering and College of Science. She has served as president of Women in Materials Science, a student organization in the department, dedicated to encouraging women to pursue studies in materials science and careers in STEM fields while promoting a community atmosphere among students and faculty.

2016 Awards Recipients