Masterworks 2018: A showcase for scientific research

Masterworks 2018. Photo by Gretchen Ertl for EECS

EECS Staff

More than 40 students presented posters or demonstrations during Masterworks 2018, the annual EECS celebration of thesis research leading to the master of science (SM) and master of engineering (MEng) degrees.

For the first time, Masterworks was co-located with the SuperUROP Showcase, a poster session highlighting research results from the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (better known as SuperUROP).

During the Masterworks session, EECS master’s students presented the results of thesis research leading to the master of engineering and the master of science degree. Their projects addressed questions in fields ranging from health care to robotics to sustainable energy, and they engaged in lively discussions with faculty, industry guests, and other students about their work. The event concluded with an awards ceremony.

Audience-choice awards, presented immediately following the event, went to:

• First-place poster: Rumen Hristov ’16, MEng ’17, “Adding Identity to Device-Free Localization Systems in the Wild.”
• Second-place poster: Mazdak Abulnaga, SM ’18, “Visualizing the Placenta in a Familiar Way.”
• Third-prize poster: Tathagata Srimani, SM ’18, for “Energy Efficient Computing from Nanotubes to Negative Capacitance.”

Abulnaga and Srimani were each later named as winners of the Morris Joseph Levin Award for Masterworks Thesis Presentations, presented at the spring 2018 EECS Celebrates ceremony. Abulnaga was supervised by Polina Golland, Professor of EECS, and Justin Solomon, X-Consortium Career Development Assistant Professor of EECS.  Srimani was supervised by Max Shulaker, Emmanuel E. Landsman (1958) Career Development Assistant Professor of EECS.

In addition, Rumya Raghavan ’17 won the Masterworks Scavenger Hunt for correctly answering the most questions about research discussed on the posters. All four students received prizes provided by Masterworks sponsor Samsung.

Faculty co-chairs for Masterworks were Professors Dirk Englund and Vinod Vaikuntanathan.