MechSE grad students win prestigious NSF fellowships

Harpreet Sangha, Matthew Williams, Anna Oldani, and Jeremy Horwitz.

The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) awards funding and research opportunities to a very small percentage of graduate applicants every year to support the up-and-coming generation of scientific researchers in the United States. Out of 13,000 submitted applications for these fellowships, only 2,000 award offers were made by the GRFP.

Jeremy Horwitz is a second-year graduate student working for Professor Surya Vanka. He is originally from Austin, Texas, and received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University in 2011. He plans to go on to receive his Ph.D.

"I’d like to do some combination of research and teaching," Horwitz said about his future ambitions. "I’ve always really liked working with students. I was a TA as an undergraduate, and it's fun to have them ask questions that might challenge you. It's a very interactive sort of experience."

Horwitz's research is in computational fluid dynamics, and his current project is the simulation of multiphase flows. He has previously researched turbulent particle-laden flows with applications to atmospheric flows. It was MechSE's strength in computational fluid dynamics that originally attracted him to Illinois for graduate school.

"There were a lot of people doing computational fluid dynamics, and all of them were doing very cool work," Horwitz said. "So I liked that there was a breadth in terms of the professors working in the field, and that the problems that they were looking at were very unique."

Anna Oldani is a first-year graduate student working in the Combustion physics group under Professor Kyritsis and Professor Lee. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in agricultural engineering, during which time she began doing research with Professor Kyritsis. Her agricultural engineering background benefited her current research, she says.

"In agricultural engineering, there is a big push now for advancing alternative fuels and their use in machinery," Oldani said. "Ag Engineering looks at both how engines can efficiently use different fuels and also how to improve fuels for various applications."

During the NSF fellowship application process, she took advantage of a MechSE department competition where students submit their application essays a month before the official deadline. Professors then reviewed the essays and gave feedback, awarding a cash prize to the best application.

"I’m very glad I did it," Oldani said. "My original essays were not very developed. The feedback was helpful, and because I started early, I didn't procrastinate writing the essays at the last minute before the official deadline!"

While she says Agricultural Engineering gave her a great opportunity to explore various fields, she believes moving to MechSE for graduate school was a very good choice.

"I’m glad I switched for grad school because my research is focused on my interests," she said. "I'm fortunate to have a fun group and a supportive department, all at one of the top engineering programs. I hope I can contribute to the department through my work made possible through this fellowship."

Matt Williams is a first-year graduate student from the University of Kansas, where he got his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering. He became interested in controls through undergraduate research and a controls-oriented internship, and decided that he wanted to pursue it further in graduate school. The MechSE department stood out to him as a good fit.

"I was looking for professors working in controls once I realized that was what I wanted to do," Williams said. "My uncle came to Illinois, and encouraged me to look at it. I started by looking at aerospace, but I found what I wanted once I looked at the mechanical engineering department."

Williams now conducts research under Professor Alleyne, characterizingmutli-timescale and heterogeneous system behavior in aircraft subsystems. He says his favorite part about the department is the number of people with whom to interact.

"This department is a lot larger than my undergraduate department," he said. "I like that there are a lot of people to meet in the same department but not all working in the same area. I also appreciate the new friendships that I have developed in my research group."

A native of Fairbanks, Alaska, Harpreet Sangha is a second-year graduate student. She received her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University, California. During her undergraduate studies, she developed an interest in medical technology. With her current advisor, MechSE Professor Amy Wagoner Johnson, Sangha is now researching the mechanical and microstructural properties of cervical tissue.

"The applications of this research are in improving diagnosis of cervical failure, which is a major contributor to preterm births in the United States and elsewhere globally," Sangha said. "There is no reliable way right now for a clinician to assess the risk of premature birth, so our long-term goal is to develop an innovative biomechanics-based approach for determining risk of premature delivery."

This research could increase understanding and knowledge of cervical biomechanics to potentially improve preterm birth diagnostics. Such an improvement would have significant medical and public health impact.

While Sangha was deciding between the University of Illinois and Stanford University for graduate school, several factors swayed her decision.

"When I came to visit the campus," she said, "I had an easy time envisioning myself as a graduate student here. Furthermore, given my interest in medical technology that I formed through coursework and industry experiences as an undergraduate, I couldn't imagine a better graduate research project. I really appreciated and greatly benefited from the opportunity to begin conducting research starting on day one of my master's program."