Engineering Students Earn Awards at 10th HBCU-UP National Research Conference
Left to Right: Stefan Jenkins, Reamonn Soto, Triesha Fagan, President Ammons, Velencia Witherspoon, and Avery Martin
Three undergraduate engineering students from the Florida A&M University-Florida State University (FAMU-FSU) College of Engineering won awards at the 10th annual Historically Black Colleges and Universities - Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) National Research Conference held in Washington DC from 10/29/2009 to 11/2/2009. Mr. Avery Martin, a second year mechanical engineering student, placed first in one of two oral 'Technology and Engineering' divisions for his presentation titled, "The Design and Implementation of a Continuous Variable Transmission." Mr. Stefan Jenkins, a second year chemical engineering student, placed first in the other oral Technology and Engineering division for his presentation titled "Image Analysis of Carbon Form for Modeling." Ms. Velencia Witherspoon, a third year chemical engineering major placed second in the oral Nanosciences division for her presentation titled "Coarsening and Aggregation of PS-coated Gold Nanoparticles." Ms. Triesha Fagan, a third year electrical engineering major, presented a poster on "Isotopic Fragmentation of a Nuclear Collision," and Mr. Reamonn Soto, a third year physics major, gave an oral presentation on "Impact of Metallic Catalysts on the Growth of CNTs."
The FAMU team was accompanied to Washington DC by Dr. Reginald Perry, professor and associate dean for student affairs at the College of Engineering. Dr. Perry is the project director of the HBCU-UP program at FAMU. FAMU Provost Cynthia Hughes Harris serves as the project's principal investigator. The program is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. "The last time we attended this conference was in 2005" said Perry. "We have won awards before, but this is the first time we obtained first place in both oral engineering divisions. In fact, our last first place winner was Asegun Henry in 2004, who recently graduated with his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT. FAMU's performance at this year's conference is a real testament to the quality of our team and the type of research we are conducting at the University."
