Every April, The Catholic University of America celebrates student and faculty research at University Research Day (URD). This event highlights current research being conducted at the university and serves as a platform to share the accomplishments of our students and faculty with the wider Catholic University community and beyond. The School of Engineering is well represented each year, sending faculty and student representatives from each of the academic departments. Participation—and success—at this event exemplifies the achievements of our faculty and students, as well as the valuable contributions they continually make in their respective areas of expertise.
Below, you will find additional information about University Research Day, as well as information pertaining to events in years past.
University Research Day 2024
University Research Day 2024 was held on Wednesday, April 17th, 2024. Dr. Christopher Raub, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, served as a co-chair of URD 2024. The event ran throughout the day, beginning at 9:00am, with a welcome address from President Peter Kilpatrick in Della Ratta Auditorium, Maloney Hall. Following President Kilpatrick's opening remarks, University Provost, Dr. Aaron Dominguez, offered an update on the State of Research at the university, followed by a Keynote Seminar by Dr. Jeffrey Herrmann, the newly endowed St. Abbo of Fleury Chair of Engineering. The remainder of the day included several oral presentations, the poster ceremony, live musical performances and film festival, and the concluding award ceremony.
Below is a list of the School of Engineering student award winners for URD 2024:
Best Oral Presentation - Undergraduate
Spinal Suspension System for Prosthetic Arm
Students: Daniel Zhao, Louis Nwuha, Abigail Post, Maria Hargrave, Nathan Ford, Sean Farrelly (Biomedical Engineering)
Advisor: Dr. Alessandro Vato (Department of Biomedical Engineering)
Best Poster - Undergraduate
Electromechanical Properties of Distal Electrofabricated Chitosan Membrane Crosslinked with Cu2+
Students: Maria Erquiaga (Mechanical Engineering) and Emma Wallace (Biomedical Engineering).
Collaborators: Claire Wang, Priscilla Ye, Long Duong, and Dr. Xiaolong Luo
Advisor: Dr. Xiaolong Luo (Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Finalist - Oral Presentation - Master's
Brain Tumor Detection: A Hybrid Transformer-Based Approach
Students: Sandeep Shiraskar (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)
Collaborators: Dr. Dominic Rizk, Alireza Omidi
Advisor: Dr. Dominic Rizk (Department Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
Finalist - Oral Presentation - Master's
Machine Learning Approach to Predicting Electric Vehicle Adoption Rates at the County Level in the United States
Student: Michael Graham-Cornell (Electrical and Computer Science)
Advisor: Dr. Lin-Ching Chang (Department Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
Finalist - Poster - Undergraduate
Rotary Kite Wind Turbine
Students: Ethan Kerr, Michael Dougherty, Matthew Dietl, and Payton Seppala
In addition, two School of Engineering faculty won teaching awards this year. Dr. Jason Davison (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) won the Teaching Excellence in Early Career Faculty Award, which honors faculty who have excelled in the teaching role and who have taught at the university for less than ten years. Dr. Gregory Behrmann (Department of Biomedical Engineering) won the Overall Teaching Excellence Award, which honors an accumulated record of teaching effectiveness and recognizes faculty who have excelled in teaching over a period of at least 10 years.
For additional information and access to the full Schedule of Events, please visit the University Research Day Website.
Previous Research Days
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University Research Day 2023
Dr. Christopher Raub, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, served as a co-chair of URD 2023. There were 33 presentations and posters presented by School of Engineering students and faculty. Three School of Engineering students won awards and an additional four were finalists. Data analytics Master's student, Gerson Escobar won the Best Masters Oral Presentation award for Parkinson Disease Detection Using Traditional Machine Learning Algorithms and Voice Signals. In the Best Doctoral Oral Presentation category, Matteo Pergami-Peries, biomedical engineering PhD student, won the award with HandMATE: Hand Movement Assisting Therapy Exoskeleton, and mechanical engineering PhD student Binh Hoang was a finalist for Develop High-Capacity FeF3 thin film conversion cathode for Next-Generation Li-ion Batteries. Mina Grace Larraquel's computer science poster A Smarter Parking System Mobile Application won the Best Masters Poster Presentation award. Biomedical engineering student Madison Hughes was a finalist for Best Undergraduate Oral Presentation for Latching Mechanism for Golf Adaptive Device, along with collaborators Elizabeth Caufield and Ryan Walczak. Thomas Nargi, electrical engineering, (with collaborator Arthur Coy) and Noah Miller, biomedical engineering, were finalists for Best Undergraduate Poster Presentation. For more information on the winners and finalists, see Finalists and Awards.