The Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering (MIE) hosted its third annual research symposium on June 4. The symposium, held in the Bahen Centre for Information Technology, promotes an open discussion of research ideas.

Organized by a committee of the Association of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Graduate Students (AMIGAS), the day was also an opportunity to learn about the breadth of research being conducted by the Department’s graduate students.

Professor Gang Chen, The Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Mechanical Engineering gave the symposium’s keynote address, entitled “Extraordinary Heat Transfer at Nanoscale.” Professor Chen thanked his own graduate students and postdoctoral researchers for their many contributions.

This year, two concurrent technical sessions were held to double the number of student talks. Eight awards were presented, which recognized the best oral and poster presentations, as well as audience choice awards, which was selected by the attendees. The winners were:

Best Oral Presentations
Biomedical Engineering & Solid Mechanics:

• Qi (Aaron) Guan (supervisor: Professor Hani Naguib)

Fluid Mechanics: 

• Mohammadreza Kholghy (supervisor: Professor Murray Thomson)

Industrial Engineering: 

• Chirag Variawa (supervisor: Professor Susan McCahan)

Best Poster Presentation
Biomedical Engineering & Solid Mechanics:

• Max Gong (supervisor: Professor David Sinton)

Fluid Mechanics: 

• Reza Nosrati (supervisor: Professor David Sinton)

Industrial Engineering: 

• Maryam Merrikhpour (supervisor: Professor Birsen Donmez)

Audience Choice Awards

• Aaron Persad (supervisor: Professor Charles A. Ward)
• Houra Mahmoudzadeh (supervisor: Professor Timothy C.Y. Chan)

“Congratulations to the symposium’s organizing committee for another outstanding year,” said Professor Jean Zu, MIE Chair. “The caliber of our graduate students is remarkable and I thank all participants and attendees for taking part this year. We have so much to learn from our colleagues.”

The fourth annual MIE Research Symposium will take place in the spring of 2013. Read the proceedings for this year’s symposium.