2020 COE Graduate Research Poster Presentation Competition

The 2020 Graduate Research Poster Presentation Competition is going somewhere it has never gone before – online! The ninth annual competition, and first to be held virtually, will be held Monday and Tuesday, April 27-28 from 4PM-7PM. Master's and PhD students showcase their work and compete with other students for prizes. The students learn valuable presentation skills and receive feedback from judges.

The criteria for this competition is as follows:

Overall Scientific Technical Merit
Significance of the Work
Quality of Research Strategy
Clarity of a Poster to a Non-Expert
Presentation of Poster

MS students will be awarded $400 for first place and $250 for runner-up. PhD students will be awarded $500 for the winner and $350 for runner-up.

Meet your 2020 competition:

Judges

Learn more about our judges

Profile of judges with their pictures and descriptions
	Dr. Niroj Aryal is an assistant professor of Biological Engineering. He earned a Ph.D. in Biosystems and Environmental Engineering from Michigan State University. His research seeks to develop sustainable solutions to current and emerging environmental problems and increase agricultural productivity using laboratory, field, and modeling studies.
	Dr. Omar M. Basha is an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical, Biological and Bioengineering. His primary research interests focus on experimental and multi-scale modeling of multiphase reactive flow systems, with applications in hydrocarbon conversion and carbon capture and sequestration technologies, in addition to the development of modular and highly intensified reaction and separation units, and methods of integrating reaction and separation.
	Dr. Kelvin Bryant received his Ph.D. from NC State University in 1993. He spent two years as a Research Associate at the University of Maryland-College Park. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at NC A&T State University. His research interests include cyber security, computer science education and virtual reality training. Dr. Bryant also has nine years of applied research and development experience in industry. He especially enjoys teaching and mentoring STEM students.
	Marcio Buhring is a Group Manager at Volvo GTT North America – CAB Engineering. He graduated in Mechanical Engineering at CEFET-PR in Curitiba, Brazil and has been working for Volvo since 2002 in CAB Engineering. Today, he is a Group Manager for Vehicle Front area where his team is responsible for the development of Hoods, Bumpers, Headlamps and Grilles.
	Dr. Arvind Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor in the department of Bioengineering, is a licensed Professional Engineer and is the Principal Investigator at the Bioinspired Microengineering (BIOME) Laboratory at NC A&T. His current research interests include Microfluidics, Biomimetics, and Tissue Engineering, applied towards Neutrophils Immunotherapeutics. He is currently teaching the courses BioMEMS and Microfluidics, Biotechnology Entrepreneurship and Biophysics Design Lab.
	Dr. Collins is a Research Scientist in the Engineering Research Center for Revolutionizing Metallic Biomaterials at NC A&T State University. He focusses on applying X-Ray Computed Tomography to biomedical and engineering studies of natural and man-made objects.
	Dr. Mookesh Dhanasar is trained in Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics and Mathematics. His research areas include high-speed aircraft geometry, Hypersonic propulsion engine systems design, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), small satellites (CubeSat’s) power and propulsion systems and nuclear in-space propulsion systems design. Dr. Dhanasar has taught a variety of STEM courses and mentored both undergraduate and graduate students.
	Gregory Duperon is a field applications engineer at Texas Instruments, supporting Aerospace & Defense and Test & Measurement customers. Gregory’s previous experience also includes roles in product/test engineering and product quality. A native of Atlanta, GA, Gregory completed undergraduate and graduate studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
	Hamid Ghanei is an Expert Product Development Engineer at Tempur Sealy International and holds 2 patents. He earned a Bachelor and Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering with focus in the area of Thermal Engineering. He also holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Production and Operation Management and a Master of Business Administration.
	Dr. Hilda Goins earned her doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis on Cognitive Workload Analysis using wavelet feature extraction of electrophysiological signals. Currently, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the NC A&T’s Center of Outreach in Alzheimer’s, Aging and Community Health (COAACH).
	Amol Gulve is an Engineering Manager at Volvo Group Trucks Technology, with over 15 years of experience working in Automotive and Heavy duty truck industry and has developing some exciting products in the field of Cab, Chassis & Vehicle Dynamics. He has been recognized for his collaborative and cross functional leadership style. Amol is originally from Mumbai India and has Masters in Mechanical Engineering from University of Detroit Mercy.
	Dr. Jha is an associate professor with teaching and research specialization in water resources engineering. He has over 15 years of experience working in multi-scale modeling of hydrology and water resources/quality for evaluating water management strategies and impact assessment studies due to urban and agriculture best management practices, land use change and climate variability.
	Dr. Steven Jiang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. His research interests include human machine systems integration, human computer interaction, and visual analytics. He has published more than 30 peer reviewed journal papers and more than 70 peer reviewed conference proceeding papers.
	Sajad Khorsandroo received his PhD degree from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2006, 2013, and 2019 respectively. He joined Department of Computer Science at North Carolina A&T State University as an assistant professor in 2019 and is a member of the IEEE and ACM. His research interests include cybersecurity, next generation networks, and cloud computing.
	Dr. Dhananjay Kumar, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at North Carolina A&T, is well recognized for his research and teaching in the areas of thin films and nanomaterials. He has published more than 125 papers in peer-reviewed journals with more a few thousand citations. He has sponsored research of more than 25 graduate students and 4 postdoctoral fellows at North Carolina A&T.
	Dr. Ahmed Cherif Megri, holds a Ph.D. degree from INSA at Lyon (France) in the area of Thermal Engineering and an “Accreditation for Supervising Research" called Habilitation (HDR) degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris VI, Sorbonne Universities (2011). Areas of Interests (projects funded by DOE, DOD, EPA, and ASHRAE), include Integration Zonal Models/Building Energy Simulation Models, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD), Data Mining and Machine Learning: Support Vector Machine tools, and 3D-printing and Advanced Manufacturing.
	Dr. Anant Kumar Mishra is an innovator with over ten years of experience in research and project management. His research interests lie in developing strategies technology demonstrators on digitization and automation topics for production automation. He is currently the Research and Technology Manager, Future of Automation at Corporate Technology at Siemens Corporation and has authored over 30 registered inventions in 16 patent families with 12 already granted patents.
	Dr. Zhichao Li obtained his Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering from Kansas State University in 2006. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of the Industrial & Systems Engineering Department of NCA&T, where he is conducting research focused on modeling, simulation and optimization of advanced manufacturing processes.
	Dr. Mohammed Mawlana is an Assistant Professor in the department of Built Environment at NCAT. He earned his PhD in Building Engineering from Concordia University located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Some of Dr. Mawlana’s research interests are Automation in construction; intelligent and sustainable infrastructure; smart construction/cities; optimization and simulation of construction operations; and high-performance computing.
	Mauricio Oleas is a Group Manager at Volvo Trucks GTT North America – CAB Engineering and is very passionate about the automotive/trucking industry and sustainable transportation. In 2009, he graduated from the University of Central Florida in Mechanical Engineering. He has been working for Volvo Trucks since January 2013, where he has held multiple positions in Project Management, Testing and now CAB Engineering.
	Dr. Sudhir Rajagopalan of Siemens has over 20 years of experience in research and technology in materials science and related manufacturing of gas and steam turbines. Notably, he has fostered automation, machine learning and advanced statistical tools in to materials topics at Siemens. He has a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Central Florida, Orlando.
	Dr. Kristen Rhinehardt is a native of High Point, NC and currently an Assistant Professor in Computational Science and Engineering. She received her BS degree from Cornell University in Biological Engineering and her MS/PhD from North Carolina A & T State University in Nanoengineering. Her research encompasses computational molecular modeling and engineering of complex biological systems.
	Dr. Ray Tesiero is an Assistant Professor in Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department with over 25 years of industry experience in manufacturing and engineering design. His research interest is Building Energy System Optimization.
	Chrysafis Vogiatzis is a faculty member at the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include operations research, network optimization and analysis, and disaster management. He is a member of INFORMS, IISE, and SIAM.
	Dr. Jinsheng Xu is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NCAT. Dr. Xu received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University. His research interests include data mining, machine learning, modeling and simulation, cyber security, and parallel computing.
	Dr. Renzun Zhao is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering at North Carolina A&T State University. Dr. Zhao earned his PhD in Civil Engineering (Environmental and Water Resource) from Virginia Tech in 2012. Before becoming a faculty member at NCAT, Dr. Zhao was involved in the industrial capacity of Veolia Water, DC WASA and was a faculty member at Lamar University (Beaumont TX).

Information for judges

INSTRUCTIONS:

Before judging day for you:

If you do not have a free Zoom account and client on your computer, download, install, create an account (you will need to interact with the judges on the day of the competition). Please see this short video for instructions.
Review “screen sharing” feature in Zoom, explained in this video.

On judging day for you:

About 15 minutes before your judging time, close all windows on your computer, so your Zoom meeting can go smoothly.
Open the Zoom meeting link no later than 5 minutes before your judging time. You will be placed in the waiting room. You will be admitted to the Zoom meeting room, when the judges are ready for your team.
Enable video and audio, so the judges can see and hear you. If you are muted, try to unmute. If that does not work, type in a chat message to say that you are muted
When you are in the Zoom meeting room, you will be made “co-host” to enable you to share your screen.
Share your team’s poster on PowerPoint.
Make a crisp presentation about the highlights of your project keeping in mind thee judging criteria:
1. Overall scientific technical merit
2. Significance of the work
3. Quality of the work
4. Quality of Research Strategy
5. Clarity of a poster to a non-expert
6. Presentation of Poster
Three judges will interact with you and any of them can ask you questions. The total time for presentation and Q&A will be about 15 minutes.
Be sure to thank the judges for the opportunity to present to them.