Monthly Archives April 2018

We are pleased to announce that our lab member Zac Stein has been awarded a 2018 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in Track 1 – Emerging Scholar. He will be studying the effects of sand ingression on thermal barrier coatings, and will present a scientific poster at the UCF SURF showcase at the end of the summer.

The SURF program provides support to students across engineering, science, and technology disciplines to engage in research.

We are proud to announce that our lab member Debraliz Isaac-Aragones has been awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship for 2018 from Purdue University. She will spend the summer at Purdue under the guidance of Dr. Amy Marconnet, studying the effective thermal conductivity of thermal interface materials using an infrared microscope. To learn more about the Purdue SURF program, click here.

The SURF program is designed to help students across engineering, science, and technology disciplines to discover a world of opportunity available to them through research.

The participants of this year’s International Research Experience for Students (IRES) program presented their research topics and progress to members of our lab. The IRES students are spending the spring preparing for a summer semester conducting research at German Aerospace Center (DLR) facilities in Germany.

The IRES students are all members of research labs at UCF, and their participation is extending our network of collaborations. Michelle Otero and Jalime Vargas work under Dr. Kareem Ahmed at the Propulsion and Energy Research Laboratory (PERL), Luisana Calderon works under Dr. Jayanta Kapat at the Center for Advanced Turbine and Energy Research (CATER), and Chance Barrett works under Dr. Laurene Tetard at the Nanoscience Technology Center.

Follow along with the IRES students by reading their blog.

We are proud to announce that Khanh Vo has won the Audience’s Choice award at the Showcase for Undergraduate Research Excellence (SURE). This is the second award he has won at the competition (see previous post). He presented at the SURE event on the topic of “Spectroscopic Analyses of Composite Materials Using a Spectroscopic Portable System.” These positive outcomes are a result of joint lab group efforts, including Khanh’s graduate mentors: Remelisa Esteves, Sanjida Jahan, and Mohamed Abdelgader.

SURE provides an opportunity for undergraduate students of all disciplines to present their research to the broader university community. For more information, click here.

The 2018 IRES team, with help from volunteers, hosted activities for UCF STEM Day. This year they had two groups of students; one from middle school and one from high school. Each group rotated through different stations where they learned about topics on heat transfer, spectroscopy, and gas turbine engines.

At the heat transfer station, the students learned about different heat transfer mechanisms through the use of thermochromic materials. A volunteer did a demonstration with thermochromic sheets made from thermochromic liquid crystals to show its color variation in response to temperature change.

At the next station, the students learned about non-destructive methods of testing through a spectroscopy demonstration. An IRES participant prepared spectrometers for the students to use to see the different color spectrum when exposed to various sources of light.

The final station consisted of posters showing a deconstructed gas turbine engine and “engines of the future”. One of the goals of this IRES STEM activity was to promote international collaboration through a language learning exchange. The IRES participants thought the students some technical and non-technical words pertaining to gas turbine engines in German. In addition, they discussed the functions of engines and the importance of using thermal barrier coatings to allow higher turbine inlet temperature, which enhances the thermal efficiency.

At the end of the activity, the IRES participants asked the students questions on what they had learned and gave out prizes for correct answers. Overall, the students really enjoyed the activity!

Special thanks goes out to all of our volunteers and the IRES students for coming together and making this activity possible.

We had:
Lin Rossmann, Debraliz Isaac, Estefania Bohorquez, Quentin Fouliard, Sanjida Jahan, Stephania Ochoa, Zach Stein, Susanne Henninger, and Ryan Hoover from the Raghavan Research Group.

Luisana Calderon (2018 IRES participant) and Juan Hernandez from the Center for Advanced Turbine and Energy Research (CATER) lab.

Michelle Otero and Jalime Vargas (2018 IRES participants) from the Propulsion and Energy Research Lab (PERL).

Chance Barrett (2018 IRES participant) from the Tetard Research Group, and Daniela Ojeda from the Mechanics of Materials Research Group.

We are pleased to announce that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded Estefania Bohorquez a graduate research fellowship. Her field of study is Aeronautical and Aerospace Engineering.

The 2018 competition received over 12,000 applications and made 2,000 award offers. As the oldest graduate fellowship of its kind, the graduate research fellowship program has a long history of selecting recipients who reach high levels of success in their academic and professional careers. To learn more about GRFP, click here.

Our lab members Zac Stein and Khanh Vo each presented posters at the Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence this week. We are proud of them and their work, and we are delighted that Khanh was named the Judges’ Choice Winner. Both students, like all of our lab’s undergraduates, are being mentored by graduate students in our lab. Khanh’s mentors are Remelisa Esteves, Sanjida Jahan, and Mohamed Abdelgader, and Zac’s mentors are Estefania Bohorquez and Lin Rossmann.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Showcase provides an opportunity for undergraduate students of all disciplines to present their research to the broader university community. For more information, click here.