The magazine and its partners — Accenture and Hexcel — this month announced their 20 Twenties Award Class of 2022. More than 80 students were nominated from around the world. The 20 winners were selected based on their academic excellence, STEM and leadership skills and innovative approach to problem solving.

The winners will get access to a network of technology hiring managers, some of the nation’s best faculty and industry experts who will help them begin to build a network of not only potential employers, but some of the greatest minds working to solve critical problems facing the aviation and space industries.

Latorre-Suarez — who is pursuing a master’s in aerospace engineering at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ — is one of only two Florida recipients who share the honor with students from Duke, MIT and Purdue, among others.

“This is the first award I have won as a student,” says Latorre-Suarez, who earned a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝. “It will give me the opportunity to expand my academic and professional connections by networking with other professionals around the country. I will also be able to learn about the opportunities available in multiple industries and universities. I believe this will bring more ideas to solve the current technology challenges.”

Latorre-Suarez is part of Engineering Professor Seetha Raghavan’s research lab, where she is investigating 3D printed sensors that could be made in space and which would monitor the structural integrity of the components and vehicles used by explorers on other planets.

She is also part of ±«°äąó’s MSTAR program, which led to an internship opportunity to work at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia this past summer. Working with NASA scientists she helped design ceramic coatings that can protect lunar vehicles from the moon’s dust.

The Puerto Rico native says Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ and its faculty have been critical to her academic journey.

“My advisor, Dr. Raghavan, has played an important role in my academic, professional and personal life,” she says. “She nominated me as a recipient of this award, and for me, it was more than that; it has been an honor to be mentored by her.”

Latorre-Suarez is researching the 3D printed sensors that could be made in space and which would monitor the structural integrity of the components and vehicles used by explorers on other planets.

“My biggest goal is to be able to collaborate on space missions, such as the Artemis moon mission,” she says. “I want to ensure astronauts’ safety while exploring other planetary surfaces.”

This is not Latorre-Suarez’s first recognition. In 2021 she was named an X-Force Fellow by the National Security Innovation Network and the Department of Defense. She is also a NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium Fellow.

“Congratulations to the winners — all of whom possess the leadership and STEM skills needed to bring innovation to our industry,” said John Schmidt, global Aerospace and Defense industry lead at Accenture in a news release. “Accenture is committed to developing the next generation of the aerospace and defense workforce by supporting programs like this that help recognize top talent.”

In addition to getting plugged into the talent network, Latorre-Suarez will also be honored at a luncheon at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., and then again during Aviation Week Network’s 65th Annual Laureate Awards and Dinner at the National Building Museum. These presentations are scheduled for November. The 20 Twenties program is a significant part of Aviation Week Network’s workforce initiative that continues to cultivate, inform, and inspire the next generation of aerospace and defense professionals, according to the organization.

Latorre-Suarez is one of many recent graduates from Raghavan’s laboratory who have received national or international recognition for their work.

“Perla has emerged as a leader and an expert in her area,” Raghavan says. “While research is challenging for any student and more so under current circumstances, (such as the pandemic), her persistence has always helped her to manage her time and academics to continue to make research progress.”

Latorre-Suarez is also paying it forward. She has led multiple outreach activities at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ representing Raghavan’s lab. She’s led components for Camp Connect and ±«°äąó’s STEM Day. Both events provide students from K-12 hands-on learning opportunities focused on different research topics conducted by the group. Latorre-Suarez also participated in Skype-a-Scientist program, where she shared her research expertise with elementary school students in Malaysia.

“She has demonstrated outstanding leadership and project management skills, as well as the constant aspiration to learn and become better at what she does,” Raghavan says. “As a mentor, she is setting up a path for many other students to succeed along the way.”

The NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium awards two different types of fellowships in areas of space science and engineering. One award is a Dissertation and Thesis Improvement fellowship, which provides partial support of a student’s thesis and doctoral dissertation beyond the existing project. The maximum award for the Dissertation and Thesis Improvement fellowship is $5,000 for projects with a duration of no longer than a year. The other award is a one-year master’s fellowship, which includes a stipend of $10,000 for those pursuing a full-time master’s degree.

The Dissertation and Thesis Improvement Fellowship recipients are:

Nanotechnology

• Pavlo Kravchuk; Mentor: Assistant Prof. Ellen Kang
• Balaashwin Babu ’20; Mentor: Professor Sudipta Seal

College of Engineering and Computer Science

• Corey Kinney; Mentor: Professor Subith Vasu
• Jose Bobren-Diaz; Mentor: Professor Subith Vasu
• Michael Tonarely ’20; Mentor: Assoc. Professor Kareem Ahmed
• Charles Clark ’19; Mentor: Assoc. Professor Kareem Ahmed

The Dissertation and Thesis Improvement fellowship is offered in efforts to support students by providing supplemental funds that are not readily obtainable. These awards can be used to help sponsor travel to specialized facilities, laboratory supplies, software licenses and other necessary research materials for the duration of the fellowship program.

µţ˛ą±ô˛ą˛ą˛őłó·Éľ±˛ÔĚýBabu ’20, who earned a bachelor’s in biomedical sciences from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, says the award will help him continue his work centered on reducing oxidative stress in order to better treat space-related bone loss among astronauts.

“The amount of information and knowledge from our experiences in outer space can enhance our life here on Earth,” Babu says. “I focused my proposal on astronauts, but bone loss is something quite prevalent even here on Earth. What we learn will likely help us here too.”

In order to apply for the fellowships, students must also have mentors and they were thrilled at this year’s results.

“It is a testament to the high-quality students we have at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, who are working on NASA-relevant research; these new awards would make a total of 15 students who received the FSGC fellowships from my group,” says Professor Subith Vasu, who mentors awardees Cory Kinney and Jose Bobren-Diaz.

Assistant Professor Ellen Kang says she was excited to see what her student Pavlo Kravchuk would accomplish next.

“I am very grateful to see how my student pushes his boundaries for achieving challenging goals. I look forward seeing what he accomplishes with this FSGC fellowship,” Kang says.

Master’s Fellowship recipients are:

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

• Christopher Rehberg ’20; Mentor: Professor Kawai Kwok
• Jose Zapata ’21; Mentor: Professor Jihua Gou
• Perla Latorre-Suarez ’21; Mentor Professor Seetha Raghavan
• Rachel Hytovick ’20; Mentor: Professor Kareem Ahmed

The FSGC Master’s fellowship is awarded to the best and brightest students, offering aid in their pursuit of a master’s degree in space-related disciplines. Working closely with NASA and the applicant’s university, this fellowship fosters collaborations between the government, private laboratories, faculty, and students. Applicants submit proposals based on research they are actively working on to be considered for a $10,000 stipend.

Jose Zapata, who transferred into Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ to study mechanical engineering in 2018, says the award will help him pursue his passion — making space operations safer for astronauts and eventually everyday people.

His research focuses on adding a health monitoring system to wind turbines. This system could ideally identify hazards before they become critical.

“Waiting for something bad to happen isn’t a good idea,” he says. “It’d be really vital if we could inspect the whole shuttle or rocket and easily protect areas that are damaged, instead of working on an entire system from scratch.”

Engineering Professor Seetha Raghavan says all the recipients are working on research that will impact space-related technology. The money will help talented students finish their advanced degrees, which will also serve as an inspiration for others.

Raghavan’s mentee, for example, Perla Latorre-Suarez ’21, is looking to develop a 3D-printing method to manufacture sensors in space environments that will monitor the structural integrity of the machinery and vehicles used. Latorre-Suarez hopes to implement these sensors in future lunar explorations, such as the Artemis Mission.

“Perla is highly active in outreach, so I know that this opportunity is one that will have a positive impact on all the undergraduates and K-12 STEM students that she mentors as well,” Raghavan says.

Yes, the journey had an unanticipated rocky start, which only added to anxiety; it all took longer than planned and the loss of my dad along the way meant I could not share the joy with the person who had inspired me the most. But through all of the challenges, I had finally made it.

I was merely a month into my dream job when it started to dawn on me that something was sorely missing. It was the strange stability I craved when I knew, amidst all of life’s uncertainties, that there was a goal to aim for and a plan to get there. There was the nagging question “What’s next?”

My intense focus to achieve that one goal meant I had not really thought past it. In one night of desperation, I carefully drafted a handwritten list of everything I wanted to achieve both short and long term, complete with steps to get there — it was my “troublesome” 5-year and 10-year plan.

Systematic planning is embedded in engineering training

Maybe it was a need to capture the snapshot of my dreams for the future at a time before they became blurred by anything that distracted me, or maybe it was my engineering training that kicked into action.

The thing is that engineering teaches systematic planning throughout design, build and testing to assure the predefined outcomes are achieved. But perhaps most crucial in the planning process is that it incorporates all considerations for alternative scenarios and conditions that lead to built-in redundancies in the final design. This is intended to ensure the best outcome under uncertainties.

Planning an experimental campaign

This, in fact, helped Apollo 13 mission specialists, astronauts and engineers orchestrate an extraordinary safe return to earth after an in–flight explosion led to a slow loss of oxygen and system failures. A series of decisions made as part of mission and engineering planning long before the mission was crucial to the ability to react and adapt to the challenges that arose. In engineering, simulation and training are part of that systematic planning effort.

Although not necessarily planning a space mission, I often describe Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ research at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois as bringing my team of students somewhat close to such an experience. Every once in a while, students take part in intense planning for experiments at the synchrotron facility. Only about 20 of such large scale, high energy synchrotron radiation facilities exist around the world producing intense beams of X-rays that have revealed secrets of the universe and solved some of our greatest scientific challenges. This makes access to “beam time” at such facilities highly competitive and extremely valuable.

As scientists, our goal is to produce groundbreaking scientific results in our field from experiments at the synchrotron. The months preceding an experimental campaign are filled with planning activities starting with clarifying goals and priorities, because if the beam experiences an unplanned shutdown or samples fail prematurely, every one of us needs to know the contingency and the critical experiments or data to salvage.

Prototyping, mocking up of experimental setups, and training on instrumentation allow us to better anticipate potential failures, troubleshoot and ensure backup parts are on standby. Training on handling and analyzing data help us to be prepared to quickly assess the data collected on site to identify problems and rectify them on the spot. The plan itself sits on our working whiteboard — a living, breathing document, changing in real time through the 96 hours of our precious window to knowledge at Argonne.

“Why did we spend all our time planning just to get here and have to change it all up?,” a student asked once in frustration of the perceived imperfection.

“Because, we are going to be successful in spite of adversity, and it is just because of all that planning. You’ll see,” I assured.

Planning can provide comfort in times of uncertainty but may only lead to anxiety if perfect execution is the only focus. But the immense value of the act of planning is most evident if your actual plans fall through.

Reacting to challenges

In a world often obsessed with perfection, maybe a true measure of success is having reacted well enough to challenges for the best possible outcomes, all thanks to a process of planning.

In the past 12 years, more than 20 Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ students have received opportunities to run experiments at the synchrotron, gaining valuable experience and mentoring from extraordinary scientists at the laboratory, silently changing perceptions of what experimental planning and successful execution really looks like. Many have gone on to earn national recognition for their research through awards and fellowships.

As for my “troublesome” plan, it was indeed a silent driver during the years, pushing me out of latency toward the goals that never diminished but helping me let go of what I no longer cared for. It was “troublesome” to me because it was a plan that required people around me to make sacrifices, a cost I had not envisaged when I wrote it.

The realization was that none of it could have been achieved without their support and that the journey, however different it was from what I imagined, was all that really mattered.

Seetha Raghavan is a professor in ±«°äąó’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. She can be reached at seetha.raghavan@ucf.edu.

One hundred and eighteen years have passed since the Wright brothers demonstrated the first, free, controlled and sustained flights in a power-driven, heavier-than-air machine, known as the Wright Flyer, at Kitty Hawk, NC. Since then, engineers around the world have successfully made some of the most amazing air vehicles that fly farther, faster and higher than we might ever have imagined.

The colossal Beluga XL cargo airplane, with a capacity of 56 tons or equivalently seven adult elephants, has the largest volume of any cargo aircraft in the world. The sleek SR-71 aircraft achieved a top speed of more than three times the speed of sound. The Solar Impulse aircraft traveled 25,000 miles around the world with 550 hours in the air while powered only by the sun.

This is a technology demonstration of epic proportions and the scientific challenges of this six-year quest cannot be understated.

Many of the innovations developed for flight, such as new lightweight materials and battery technology, have life-changing impact on earth. It is hard to imagine what more breakthroughs can be achieved in flight.

But approximately 162 million miles away, the Ingenuity helicopter, will soon attempt to make its first flight in the thin atmosphere of Mars. The flight of this aerial vehicle that hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover, is a historic milestone that will mark a pioneering attempt to demonstrate flight outside of our world.

This is a technology demonstration of epic proportions and the scientific challenges of this six-year quest cannot be understated. It is like inventing flight all over again with completely different harsh environments and challenges that will open up a universe of new possibilities and designs in the future.

My own perspectives of the wonder of flight have led me down the path to become an aerospace engineer and a student pilot.

Flying Fearless

“Let’s practice stalls today,” suggested my flight instructor as my eyes widened.

Stalls? My mind raced back to the Flight Envelope that I show my students every year in class, a diagram that identifies the safe operating limits of an aircraft. The curves define the speed at which stalls can happen, where the flow around your wing separates and you literally fall from the sky. Engineers provide this envelope with the goal of staying away from the stall and overload regions.

But here I was, with my airspeed below 50 knots, pulling up on the yoke, pointing higher and higher towards the sky, with my heart pounding while the warning horn blared, in anticipation of the moment the air releases its lift on my wings. And when it does, I swiftly lower my nose, apply full power and recover. Over the course of months, I would do this again and again until it was routine.

Lessons in flight could often relate to life in general. In effect, to overcome something that you lack confidence in, whether it is public speaking, coding or handling equipment, you might consider facing it head-on, sometimes again and again until the practice makes you almost fearless and completely prepared.

It was important to realize that making mistakes while learning was part of the process, that every mistake simply meant that I was challenging myself beyond my capabilities and stepping out of my comfort zone but improving with every step. It was less daunting when you knew someone was right next to you ready to jump in, until one day you realize you do not need them anymore.

Planning a flight, no matter how short, involves a myriad of activities and skills: aircraft weight and balance calculations, weather briefings, navigation information — because there is nothing like being fully prepared to overcome any challenge that comes in your way.

To this day, my heart still pounds in that moment of an impending stall, keeping me on much-needed high alert, but my confidence in knowing I can regain control has grown tremendously.

The Future of Flight

In the midst of the current practical standstill of air travel, contemplating the future of flight is perhaps the best forward-looking approach. Think of vertical take-off-and-landing air taxis for urban mobility, supersonic air travel that can get you across the world in half the current time, drones that will change the face of logistics, agriculture and healthcare delivery.

Meanwhile on Mars, Ingenuity is carrying a piece of fabric from the wing of the Wright Flyer, a symbol of how far we have come in this amazing journey of flight.

No matter what we achieve in these out-of-this-world flights that have been planned in the coming weeks, it will be a success simply because it represents humanity’s mighty aspirations and everything we will learn will eventually lead to successes and dreams beyond what we can imagine now.

Seetha Raghavan is a professor in ±«°äąó’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. She can be reached at seetha.raghavan@ucf.edu.

The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who serve on a panel for a year. A new column is posted each Wednesday on Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Today and then broadcast on WÂ鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝-FM (89.9) between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday. Opinions expressed are those of the columnists, and are not necessarily shared by the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝.

Heading to space was not an option for me at the time, so the change in worldview that I sought, as a student, came in the form of studying abroad in Toulouse, France. With no knowledge of French, I was headed for three months of intensive language training followed by a master’s in aerospace engineering at Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace , one of the leading aeronautical institutions in the world.

What was I thinking?

It was perhaps the moment the airplane took off that excitement quickly turned into panic as I struggled to repeat unfamiliar phrases playing in my ear. What followed was intense immersion interspersed with experiences of getting completely lost in the city, discovering the beauty of the PyrĂ©nĂ©es, memorizing 20 possible essay responses for a flight mechanics oral exam, getting kicked out of a ˛ú´ÇĂ®łŮ±đ, or nightclub, in Paris, making lifelong friends and so much more.

Armed with my walking guidebook, I spent days in awe of the history surrounding the very places where I stood. Then there were tears of homesickness coupled with a coping mechanism that resulted in a large pile of handwritten letters, complete with drawings of my room layout, still in the possession of my then-fiancé-now-husband.

Until just one day, I vividly remember sitting in the Paris RER train on my way home from work, making small talk with a stranger about the beautiful pink sky at sunset, when realization hit me. In two years, I truly became part of this society that I had come to adopt. Although I had to leave eventually, something in me had changed forever and would never be the same.

Home is not one place but all the places where the opportunity to make a difference provides a sense of purpose and pervades a sense of belonging.

In the end, my shift in paradigm was that home is not one place but all the places where the opportunity to make a difference provides a sense of purpose and pervades a sense of belonging.

In the meantime, scientists and engineers are pioneering new technology in space flight so that we might all one day experience the overview effect and learn more about ourselves through earth observation and space exploration. The most significant part is that these efforts represent some of the largest and most successful examples of international cooperation.

Experiments on the International Space Station, for example, come from researchers in 108 countries and areas around the world. Even within the atmosphere, major aircraft programs such as the development of the F-35 stealth combat aircraft demonstrate that the most ambitious engineering innovation is best achieved through global partnerships.

Yet, STEM fields continue to be the most underrepresented in study or research abroad. This is mostly due to intensive academic programs that leave little time to spare or to acquire the related language training as well as an overall fewer number relevant programs organized and offered.

My first international collaboration was initiated with a simple phone call reaching out to scientists in the United States and Germany with my ideas of joint research on propulsion and energy. Fast forward nine years and three successful National Science Foundation International Research awards later, 20 students have had three-month research experiences with the German Aerospace Center in Cologne and Stuttgart with the collaboration growing to six faculty members on either side.

Teams from both countries have come together to conduct some of the most unique experiments together with scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. It was our ability to leverage strengths in the different ways we approach scientific challenges that has brought us outcomes we could not have achieved individually.

Subsequent Fulbright awards provided some of these students with opportunities to extend their experience over a year. Many have pursued graduate research where their skills in resilience and adaptability from their international experience have proven indispensable. All have gained invaluable mentorship from scientists here and abroad.

Their outreach has been focused on sharing experiences and dispelling the myth that scientists and engineers only learn within the confines of a classroom or laboratory. This has been a crucial part of ensuring these experiences benefit many more.

If these past months have brought anything to stark clarity, it should be that we are all more intricately connected than we imagine and that we have more to gain working together to overcome the biggest challenges we face today than we do disparately.

So, until we all get to experience the life-changing view of our collective home from space one day, it remains a goal of mine to continue delivering that higher perspective I once was afforded — one international experience at a time.

Seetha Raghavan is a professor in ±«°äąó’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. She can be reached at seetha.raghavan@ucf.edu.

The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who serve on a panel for a year. A new column is posted each Wednesday on Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Today and then broadcast on WÂ鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝-FM (89.9) between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday. Opinions expressed are those of the columnists, and are not necessarily shared by the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝.

The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering is offering the new degree to provide the workforce to new companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin and others that have opened facilities in the state. Plus, major research and development programs in the past few years have brought thousands of jobs to the region, such as Space Florida and Northrop Grumman.

“There are over 2,000 aerospace-related companies in Florida with many hiring for R&D [research and development] and also working on developing innovations never before explored,” says Associate Professor Seetha Raghavan, who will be involved with the program. “Such ventures point to the need for expertise related to high-level research offered by advanced level Ph.D. degrees.”

Students in the program will explore aerodynamics, propulsion, dynamics and control, structures and materials, and aerospace systems design. The curriculum will be interdisciplinary, including unique course offerings made possible by faculty collaborations between the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, its Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research, the College of Optics and Photonics, and the Townes Laser Institute.

Major breakthroughs in aeronautical and space technology the past few years show this field is making a big impact.

The growing aerospace industry is pioneering new technologies and is undergoing dynamic change driven by increasing demand in space communication, imagery, launch services and space transportation. Major breakthroughs in aeronautical and space technology the past few years show this field is making a big impact, such as NASA’s successful Mars InSight Lander and OSIRIS-REx mission for asteroid sampling, Virgin Galactic’s first spaceflight, and China’s Yutu rover on the far side of the moon.

“This leadership in innovation must be supported by a workforce equipped with scholarship and research capacity at the graduate level,” Raghavan says.

For the fourth consecutive year, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ has produced more graduates who are hired by aerospace and defense companies than any other university in the nation, according to Aviation Week Network. In addition, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ College of Engineering and Computer Science enrolls the most aerospace engineering undergraduate students in the State University System.

“The Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. program provides a much-needed pathway to graduate education in the field and we are well positioned to increase the number of STEM graduates in the state and beyond,” Raghavan says.

Graduates of the program will be positioned to serve as aerospace engineers and technical leaders in the industry, faculty, and researchers at higher education institutions, national and government laboratories and elsewhere.

Visit the program website for more information. Prospective students can apply for the fall classes by July 1. Raghavan can be reached at seetha.raghavan@ucf.edu.

The project, led by Seetha Raghavan and co-investigator Ranajay Ghosh, of  the College of Engineering & Computer Science, focuses on using optics and sensors along with advanced computational analysis to develop monitoring techniques to make sure that the thermal coatings surrounding the hottest sections of turbine engines do not overheat or degrade while the engine is in motion. Ultimately the research could make turbomachinery operation safer, improve efficiency and reduce emissions.

The Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ project is one of nine in six areas funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy.

Raghavan’s project was the only one in the nation funded under the topic addressing Advanced Instrumentation and will receive $880,000. That includes $150,000 from Siemens Power Generation, which will be used as fellowships to support three graduate students. Sanjida Jahan, Peter Warren and Lin Rossmann will contribute to the project by conducting research at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ and the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The team is part of ±«°äąó’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research, which is a leader in the area of turbomachinery research.

“This research project provides excellent opportunities for our team to work closely with industry as well as a national laboratory,” Raghavan said.

The team will conduct experiments in extreme environments and advanced computational analysis to develop techniques and instrumentation that better monitor coating integrity with the goal of enabling higher turbine temperatures in the engines. Achieving higher temperatures would mean greater efficiency in converting the chemical energy of the jet’s fuel into mechanical work. Emissions also would be reduced. This is significant for both jet engines and turbines used for power generation.

Using optics and sensors will enable the researchers to monitor the coatings surrounding the engine, protecting metal blades and other parts from heat beyond what they could typically endure.

The work will be done in three phases:

Raghavan said ±«°äąó’s alignment with industry, including Siemens Power Generation and GE Aviation, were beneficial in the receipt of the grant. The college has ongoing programs such as internships and faculty fellowships with Siemens and also works with the gas-turbine industry on funded research projects.

While the initial research will be done by replicating extreme engine environments at laboratory-scale, Raghavan said the ultimate goal is to develop a system that can be used in working turbine engines.

Engineering faculty Kareem Ahmed and Subith Vasu also received a $600,000 subcontract on another project funded under this particular DOE program. The researchers are also members of CATER.

The early-career professors were given Reach for the Stars awards as part of the celebration of Founders’ Day. President John C. Hitt selects the winners based on faculty members’ past four years of work. Recipients must be an assistant or associate professor and have attained significant research work during their early career. Many winners have already received National Science Foundation Career Awards recognizing their potential.

The Reach for the Stars winners get a $10,000 annual research grant for three years, which can be renewed based on their promising work. This is the third year Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ has given Reach for the Stars Awards at Founders’ Day.

The 2016 winners are:

Xun Gong joined Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2005, and is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the College of Engineering & Computer Science. His research interests lie in the areas of microwave filters and passive components, sensors, flexible electronics, micromachining and ceramic materials. He has published 31 journal papers and 64 conference papers. Gong’s total research funding is $4.3 million, and he is currently the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on grants from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation that total more than $1.7 million. Gong has received an NSF Faculty Early CAREER award, the most prestigious honor the NSF awards to a junior faculty member. Gong has received a number of research awards and recognitions: the College of Engineering and Computer Science Distinguished Researcher award, and the College’s CAE Link Faculty Fellow. He has established an advanced antenna and microwave research lab, and received a number of honors for his teaching, including the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Teaching Incentive Program award in 2010 and 2015.

Annette Khaled joined Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2002 and is an associate professor in the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences and the College of Medicine, where she heads the Division of Cancer Research. One area of her research uses innovative therapies and techniques – including nanoparticles – to attack and destroy metastatic cancer cells that leave the original tumor and travel to the brain, bones and lungs. Khaled has participated in research that’s drawn $4.8 million in grant funding from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the Florida Department of Health and others. She has been granted one patent and has five others in the application process, as well as a pending licensing agreement to allow her technology to be used in the treatment of breast cancer. She is a founding faculty member of the College of Medicine and helped develop its curriculum. Her research has appeared in 90 peer-reviewed publications and abstracts – more than 50 of those since coming to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝. She has received an Outstanding Graduate Educator Award, Outstanding Service Award and a Research Incentive Award from Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, as well as numerous awards from scientific organizations.

Seetha Raghavan, who came to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2008, is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering within the College of Engineering & Computer Science. She holds joint faculty appointments in that college’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and also with CREOL: the College of Optics and Photonics. Her research makes air and space travel safer by focusing on engineering the mechanics of structures and materials to meet the extreme conditions associated with energy generation, aerospace propulsion and re-entry. Her research team has shown the ability to monitor the very thin layers of super strong coatings used to protect turbine blades as they are exposed to extreme conditions to get a clear understanding of how they fail. Raghavan has brought in more than $1.5 million in research funding, published 23 journal papers and more than 30 conference publications and posters, and has been granted two patents. Her private-sector research collaborations have included Boeing Research and Technology, Praxair and ALSTOM Power. Raghavan received the International Research and Collaboration Award from the University of Sydney in 2015, and a Broadening Participation Research Initiation Grants in Engineering award from the National Science Foundation in 2011. From her college, Raghavan received an Excellence in Research award in 2014, a Teaching Incentive Program award in 2013, and an Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching award in 2012. She became an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2013 and a Lockheed Martin Faculty Fellow in 2012. She is consistently ranked highly by her undergraduate and graduate students.

Swadeshmukul Santra is an associate professor in the NanoScience Technology Center with a joint appointment in the College of Sciences’ Department of Chemistry. He is also an affiliated faculty of the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences. Much of his research focuses on the use of nanoparticles in the areas of agriculture and medicine. Since joining Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2005, Santra has brought in nearly $5.8 million in grants and other external funding to support his research. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded Santra a $1.9 million “Center of Excellence” grant to develop a method for protecting the troubled citrus industry from Huanglongbing, better known as citrus greening. The same agency awarded $1.7 million to further develop Zinkicide technology, a nanoparticle aimed at curbing the same disease. Santra has developed novel probes capable of delivering anti-cancer drugs to cancer cells. The National Science Foundation continues to support his cancer research. Santra has 23 patents and more than 85 published articles. He received a Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Excellence in Research Award in 2015.

Jayan Thomas is an associate professor in the NanoScience Technology Center with joint appointments in the College of Optics & Photonics and the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. Since joining Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2011, Thomas has published 24 peer-reviewed journal papers, has had two patents awarded and has another four patents filed. He has received more than $1 million in research funding as a principal investigator and another $800,000 as a co-principal investigator. Last year, Thomas was awarded an R&D 100 award – given to the top inventions of the year worldwide – for his development of a cable that can both transmit and store energy, which has far-reaching implications for electric vehicles, wearable electronics and the aerospace industry. In 2014, he received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and a Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ Excellence in Research award, and was a finalist for the World Technology Network award by TIME Magazine and Fortune. Other areas of Thomas’ research include a method for limiting laser light attacks on commercial aircraft, a new technique for fabricating nanostructured supercapacitors, self-cleaning solar panels and more. He has worked to further the field of nanoscience by developing new master’s programs in the NanoScience Technology Center, helping launch the Nanotechnology Club at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, organizing annual NanoFest Florida community outreach events at public libraries, and delivering nanoscience talks to students at Valencia College and Eastern Florida State College.

Subith Vasu is assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering within the College of Engineering & Computer Science. Vasu, who came to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ in 2012, conducts research within ±«°äąó’s Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research, and has a secondary joint appointment with the Florida Space Institute. He is internationally recognized as a top researcher in the field of combustion science and fuels. He received a Research Excellence Award from his college in 2016, and in 2015 received a Young Investigator award from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and a New Investigator award from the American Chemical Society. In a little over a year, he’s received a number of grants totaling more than $1.8 million. That includes a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate how power plants might be able to abandon the use of water to generate energy from steam and instead use supercritical CO2, a fluid state of carbon dioxide. He also received a U.S. Air Force faculty fellowship in 2015. Since earning his doctoral degree in 2010, Vasu has had 27 papers published in scholarly journals, as well as 51 conference papers and more than 20 invitations to present his research.

The work, which was published Thursday in Nature Communications, was conducted at the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, the Institute of Materials Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago with the collaboration ofCleveland State University.

Seetha Raghavan, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, conceived of the highly challenging idea of monitoring the very thin layers of super strong coatings used to protect turbine blades as they are exposed to extreme conditions in order to get a clear understanding of how they fail.

Because of the difficulty of monitoring engines in-flight, most manufacturers test blades either after flight or rely on simulated tests to give them the data on how the various coatings on the blades are performing. The prospect of “seeing” the coatings at work in actual conditions was enticing to Raghavan.

She was familiar with the work of Cleveland State University’s Dean of Engineering, Professor Anette Karlsson and DLR Materials Professor Marion Bartsch and she has had a longstanding collaboration with Jonathan Almer and John Okasinski from the Advanced Photon Source at the Argonne National Laboratory. Her idea was to use the expertise at the German facility to develop samples and design a compact furnace capable of mimicking real-world conditions faced by the turbines and then transporting the furnace to the Argonne Center to integrate it for the synchrotron X-Ray portion of the experiment.

“While the idea sounded impossible, we had a team of willing collaborators with complementary skills as well as excellent students who were motivated to take on the challenge,” Raghavan said.

The Argonne particle accelerator would be used to generate the high-energy X-Rays which would be deflected by the atoms in the coating material. By measuring the level of bending or diffraction, the scientists would be able to determine how the coating has been impacted by conditions.

Raghavan, who has been funded by the National Science Foundation for the last three years to study the durability of high temperature coatings, received an additional $52,000 as part of a Catalyzing New International Collaborations award from the agency to support the experiment and international collaboration.

In June 2012, Raghavan and her graduate students Kevin Knipe and Albert Manero travelled to Cologne, Germany where the students spent two months working with the DLR team to design the compact furnace and coat the turbine blade material to develop specimens to be tested. In November, the team reunited outside Chicago at the Argonne laboratory to conduct the synchrotron X-ray studies.

After four days of round-the-clock testing, the team collected a terabyte of raw data, revealing some areas of previously undetectable strain, which are expounded on in the Nature Communications piece.

Raghavan said she hopes the research will be used by turbine manufacturers to verify their testing results, develop new simulation models and ultimately help them better predict any potential failure.

Other participants in the project included Sanna Siddiqui of Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ and Carla Meid and Janine Wischek of DLR. The work was additionally supported by the German Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.