Oregon State Engineers are creating a better future here and now, through vital research that tackles some of humanity’s greatest challenges. For the past two years, the Graduate Engineering Research Showcase has offered an exciting glimpse of that future, presented by some of the creative students who are helping to bring that future to life.
The National Science Foundation has awarded four recent graduates from Oregon State University’s College of Engineering the 2024 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. This five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support inclusive of an annual stipend of $37,000 and a $16,000 allowance for tuition and fees.
Fellows are recognized as outstanding students who demonstrate the potential to become knowledge experts in their fields, contributing significantly to research, teaching, and innovation throughout their careers.
The College of Engineering at Oregon State University is a proven leader in research, expanding knowledge and creating new engineering solutions in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced manufacturing, clean water, materials science, sustainable energy, computing, resilient infrastructure, and health care.
Growing up, Elaine Gething Davis, ’49, would hear an airplane soaring above her family’s coastal Oregon farm and rush outside with everyone else to watch it. Later, living near a military base during World War II, she was amazed by the variety of airborne machines leaping into the sky. After the war, her father bought a surplus airplane and gave the whole family flying lessons. Thus began a lifelong fascination with things that fly.
When she arrived at Oregon State College in 1945, she was the sole woman in her mechanical engineering class.
Two engineering graduate students at Oregon State University and one recent alum have been selected as fellows in the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
Yue Cao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Energy Systems research group, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. The award includes a grant of nearly $500,000 over five years.
The rescuers search for survivors in the darkness of a vast labyrinth, deep below the surface. They squeeze through tight spaces, navigate blind turns, scramble over obstacles, and struggle to avoid innumerable traps laid for them. One wrong turn could spell disaster. Communication is limited. And time is running out.
In a way, Sanjida Yeasmin is pursuing her PhD in electrical and computer engineering not just for herself, but for countless others as well.
“I’m trying to bring electronics to the medical field to save lives or make lives better. This always drives me,” she said.
Barbara Simpson, assistant professor of structural engineering, has received a Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, award from the National Science Foundation. The award includes a grant of nearly $600,000 over five years.
Since she began studying materials science as a graduate student at Oregon State University in 2015, Kenya Hazell, a GEM Fellow and recent environmental technology researcher and development intern at Corning, has sought to discover ways to sustainably create and apply polymer composites — unique materials with synergistic properties, formed by combining reinforcement materials with polymer matrices.
