Four faculty from the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering were honored last month with the ASME Rising Star in Mechanical Engineering Award, which recognizes early career researchers who have received prestigious national awards including the National Science Foundation's CAREER award.
The recipients include:
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Amir Alavi, associate professor and B.P. America Faculty Fellow, Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Mechanical Metamaterial Electronics: Theory, Design and Applications.”
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Qihan Liu, assistant professor, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “Robust, Reversible, and Stimuli-Responsive Thermodynamic Adhesion in Hydrogels.”
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Ioannis Zervantonakis, assistant professor and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow, Bioengineering. “Illuminating the Effects of Hypoxia on Macrophage-Epithelial Crosstalk in Engineered 3D Environments.”
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Xiayun Zhao, assistant professor, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. “Toward RIPEST Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing (PAM): A Cyber-Physical System of Novel Dual-wavelength Photoinhibition aided PAM.”
Since 2016, 27 of Swanson School faculty have received CAREER awards. The Rising Stars Awards were presented at the International Mechanical Engineering Celebration and Showcase, a reception that included a poster session where researchers presented their work. The celebration was part of the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.
“We are incredibly proud of our young faculty and their accomplishments in winning these significant awards at the beginning of their research careers,” noted David Vorp, senior associate dean for research and facilities. “External validation by historic associations like ASME testify to an academic's early trajectory and I congratulate them on this honor.”