Christian Tabedzki | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Le Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France
Home Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Home Faculty Advisor: Robert Riggleman, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Engineering structure of bottle-brush polymer electrolytes for next generation solid state-batteries
Field of Study: Chemical Engineering
Christian Tabedzki is a third year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania in chemical engineering. He holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from Rutgers University. His research focuses on the self-assembly of liquid-crystalline block copolymers and of grafted nanoparticles inside lamellar diblock copolymers. 
His project will focus on the self-assembly of bottle brush diblock copolymers, a unique architecture that reduces entanglements between chains, simplifying processing. Currently, the chemistry/structure/property relationships for these materials remain elusive. Understanding how these materials self-assemble, and how hidden variables that affect self-assembly, is significant in order to be able to develop defect-free membranes for batteries that combine mechanically stiff polymers with conductive polymers.

Trang Vu | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Amsterdam University Medical Center (AUMC), The Netherlands
Home Institution: Rowan University
Home Faculty Advisor: Jiwook Shim, Assistant Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Improving Liquid Biopsy Using Nanopore Technology Sequencing
Field of Study: Biomedical Engineering
Trang Vu is fourth-year Ph.D. student and a NJ Governor’s STEM Scholar in the Biomedical Engineering department at Rowan University. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering at Rowan University in 2016. Under the direction of Dr. Jiwook Shim, her graduate research focuses on constructing biological nanopore assays, and devising novel strategies to study and detect biomolecular markers of cancer. 
Her project focuses on developing a novel nanopore sequencing pipeline for liquid biopsy samples, specifically to study tumor-derived cfDNA and detect cancer biomarkers. Compared to the traditional surgical biopsy, liquid biopsy is less invasive, improving the patient’s quality of life, while offering a more reliable detection of tumors and mutations over time with longitudinal sampling. It is significant because the success of this project could reduce the time required to process and analyze liquid biopsy samples from weeks currently to less than 2 days.

Jesse Mark | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at the Center for Information and Neural Networks, Osaka University, Japan
Home Institution: Drexel University
Home Faculty Advisor: Hasan Ayaz, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Neuroadaptive Training and Neurostimulation to Enhance Learning
Field of Study: Biomedical Engineering
Jesse Mark is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Health Systems at Drexel University. He is doing his dissertation research in the burgeoning field of neuroergonomics, the study of the brain at work in natural environments, under the supervision of Dr. Hasan Ayaz.
His project is about studying changes in the brain associated with learning when people are exposed to different types of training. They will use fMRI to look at brain activation and functional connectivity while subjects are in a flight simulator and compare those who are given standard lessons based on their performance with those who progress to different levels based on their mental workload or effort. In addition, they will also apply external electric stimulation to half the subjects to explore the effects of neuromodulation. The significance of this project extends far beyond just aviation education, because the adaptive training protocols developed to enhance learning from our findings can apply to any type of task where difficulty can be dynamically adjusted. Their goal is to create a generalizable system using adaptive training with neuroimaging that can be applied to any type of learning.

Olivia Ngo | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Glasgow, Scotland
Home Institution: Drexel University
Home Faculty Advisor: Peter Lewin, Richard B. Beard Distinguished University Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Macrophage Phenotype Transition as the Biological Mechanism of Low-frequency (20 kHz), Low-intensity (100 mW/cm2) Therapeutic Ultrasound
Field of Study: Biomedical Engineering
Olivia Ngo’s thesis work is to determine the role of macrophage phenotype as the biological mechanism of therapeutic low-intensity (<100mW/cm2), low-frequency (20kHz) ultrasound mediated healing that has been shown to significantly accelerate chronic wound closure in pilot clinical studies. Chronic wounds currently affect approximately 6.5 million patients in the United States and an excess of 25 billion dollars is spent annually on treatment. Current standards of care for chronic wounds, including months of weekly re-dressings and debridement, fails to guarantee active wound healing or closure.

Jesse Roll | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, India
Home Institution: Purdue University
Home Faculty Advisor: Xinyan Deng, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Gust Mitigation in Flapping Wings
Field of Study: Mechanical Engineering
Jesse Roll is a PhD candidate at the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) in Mechanical Engineering and Master’s degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. His research interest is in the aerodynamics of flapping wings, principles of animal locomotion, and the development of bio-inspired robotic systems. He is the recipient of the Ingersoll-Rand Fellowship and Ward A. Lambert Graduate Teaching Fellowship from School of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University. His collaborative work on the design and control of a flapping wing robots as a summer researcher with the Air Force Research Lab at Wright Patterson Air Force Base lead to the development and patent of a scalable electromagnetic actuator for underactuated robotic systems. Working in a highly interdisciplinary field, his work has been published in a diverse range of scientific journals, including Royal Society Interface, Biology Letters, and IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

Darrin Schultz | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at The Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russia
Home Institution: University of California Santa Cruz and Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Home Faculty Advisors: Dr. Richard Green and Dr. Steven Haddock
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Engineering Novel Bioluminescent Proteins
Field of Study: Deep-Sea Biology, Biomolecular Engineering, and Bioinformatics
Darrin Schultz is a PhD candidate in the Biomolecular Engineering and Bioinformatics department at the University of California Santa Cruz, and is a graduate researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. After completing his BA at Oberlin College, he was a US Student Fulbright Fellow at Nagoya University in Japan where he studied the phylogenetics and biochemistry of bioluminescent animals in East Asia. 
Darrin’s doctoral research aims are to learn more about the evolution and bioluminescence biochemistry of deep sea animals, to develop novel bioluminescent systems into useful molecular tools for biomedical and neuroscience research, and to write novel genome assembly software to enhance our ability to study invertebrate organisms. 
As an IIE-GIRE scholar Darrin hopes to bioengineer several novel light-emitting enzymes from deep-sea plankton into markers suitable for use in model organisms. This research will provide a low-cost alternative to the proprietary industry standards for luminous protein intracellular markers.

Jessica Taylor | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Sydney, Australia 
Home Institution: Iowa State University
Home Faculty Advisors: Cristina Poleacovschi, Iowa State University and Michael Perez, Auburn University
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Standardized and Contextual Infrastructure Adaptation Framework: linking strategies and capacities of Alaska Native and Torres Strait Communities
Field of Science: Civil Engineering
Jessica Taylor is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at Iowa State University. Originally from California, I graduated from California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo with my B.S. in Environmental Engineering and minor in Science, Technology, and Society. Her work brought her to Iowa State University (ISU) as a doctoral student, where shes focused on understanding the factors that support and limit the ability of rural communities to respond to environmental risks, such as flooding and erosion, that impact infrastructure. At ISU, her work and passions have become intertwined through her research in community-centered resilience planning. Her passion for understanding the intersectionality of engineering, society, and policy was fostered through her involvement in Cal Poly’s Engineers Without Borders Student Chapter and work for the California State Water Quality Control Board.

Hannah Cebull | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Cape Town, South Africa
Home Institution: Purdue University
Home Faculty Advisor: Craig Goergen, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Predicting Effects of Valve Lesions in Rheumatic Heart Disease Patients
Field of Science: Biomedical Engineering
Hannah Cebull’s project will focus on creating computational models for simulating the effects of valve lesions using CT and cardiovascular magnetic resonance image data of hearts and aortic valves from patients with rheumatic heart disease (RHD). This disease causes over 300,000 deaths per year, primarily affecting low- to middle-income countries, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. Current treatments for this disease are lacking, particularly regarding the treatment of aortic valve lesions caused by RHD. They will estimate wall shear stresses, turbulent kinetic energy, and particle residence time. The results will then be further compared to patient outcomes, allowing us to determine if computational modeling can be used for clinical prediction and to better inform physicians when to surgically intervene. In addition, this work will be important for further increasing awareness and funding to this less explored area of cardiovascular research.

Alex Hsain | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Home Institution: North Carolina State University at Raleigh
Home Faculty Advisor: Jacob Jones, Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Flexible Oxide Capacitors for High-Energy Density Wearable Electronics
Field of Science: Materials Science
Alex Hsain is a Ph.D. student, NSF GRFP Fellow, and 2017 Truman Scholar studying Materials Science & Engineering. Hsain’s research aims to enable the next generation of low-powered electronics by studying promising lead-free, HfO2-based ferroelectric materials. Ferroelectrics are an inversion symmetry-breaking class of materials that possess a spontaneous polarization that can be switched by an external electric field. This property allows ferroelectrics to store memory without an external power source and can be used in a wide suite of consumer electronics. Hsain fabricates ferroelectric films via Atomic Layer Deposition in a clean room environment and utilizes the Analytical Instruments Facility (AIF) at NC State to characterization their properties. She uses techniques such as X-Ray Diffraction, X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, and Piezoresponse Force Microscopy to probe the atomic structure of HfO2 films. In concert with her scientific curiosities, Hsain is also passionate about STEM education and science policy. She is co-founder of NC State’s SciBridge, an organization that builds lesson plans and experiment kits on sustainable energy topics and ships them to partner universities in East Africa, and co-founder of SciPolPack, a science policy advocacy group in collaboration with the National Science Policy Network (NSPN).

Sarah Libring | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Netherlands Cancer Institute, the Netherlands
Home Institution: Purdue University 
Home Faculty Advisor: Luis Solorio, Assistant Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Developing Output Metrics for a Precision Drug Screening Platform to Target Metastatic Breast Cancer
Field of Science: Biomedical Engineering
Sarah Libring is a Ph.D. student in Biomedical Engineering at Purdue University under Dr. Luis Solorio. Sarah Libring received her B.S. in biomedical engineering from Rutgers University in 2017 with minors in packaging engineering and sociology. As an undergraduate, she researched in a chemical engineering computational lab and a biomedical engineering wet lab where she modeled the aggregation dynamics of polymer-functionalized virus capsids for drug delivery and studied the mechanical and biochemical properties of a scaffold for ACL regeneration, respectively. Sarah also participated in REU programs at UT Austin and Purdue University.
Her current research focuses on understanding metastasis and drug resistivity of breast cancer cells, particularly through cell-matrix interactions. She is currently exploring the dynamic role of intracellular, soluble, and fibril fibronectin in the disease progression. Sarah is passionate about translating precision medicine research into clinically-relevant solutions. She is a recipient of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute fellowship for Pre-Doctoral Training in Translational Research (CTSI TL1).

Alex Breitweiser | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at TU Delft, The Netherlands
Home Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Home Faculty Advisor: Lee Bassett
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Nuclear Spin Defects for Quantum Memory
Field of Science: Quantum Physics
Alex is a third year PhD student in the Department of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving his Bachelor’s in Mathematics from the University of Chicago and Master’s in Physics from New York University, he joined the lab of Lee Bassett in the Electrical Engineering department at UPenn. Alex’s cross-disciplinary research focuses on optically active spin-defects in solid-state materials and their application to emerging quantum communication and computation technologies.

Sara Fleetwood | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Adolphe Merkle Institute, University of Fribourg
Home Institution: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Home Faculty Advisor: E. Johan Foster, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Controlled production of cellulose nanocrystal microfibers through the confinement in a microfluidic device
Field of Study: Materials Science and Engineering
Sara Fleetwood is a first-year PhD student researching and developing stimuli-responsive, bio-inspired, bio-based polymer materials. She holds a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech and formerly worked in industry as a Product Development Engineer, designing and testing ropes. Her current project, sponsored by IIE-GIRE and in collaboration with the Adolphe Merkle Institute, involves the fabrication and characterization of anisotropically-oriented cellulose nanocrystals as building blocks for polyurethane microfibers. In her free time, she enjoys surveying and mapping unexplored cave passages, for various governmental agencies.

Nevin Brosius | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Lille, France
Home Institution: University of Florida
Home Faculty Advisor: Ranga Narayanan, Distinguished Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Faraday Instability
Field of Study: Chemical Engineering
Nevin Brosius is a third year PhD student at University of Florida in chemical engineering studying resonance and pattern formation in fluid mechanics.
Nevin’s research focuses on a resonant phenomenon involving fluid interfaces known as the Faraday instability, which has a wealth of applications in space-based technologies and the measurement of key thermophysical properties.
He is a recipient of the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF), a technology-driven program facilitating space-focused research of Faraday instability as a means to improve heat transfer operations in space. Nevin has thus far published in Nature npj Microgravity and has filed a patent for his work on the Faraday instability in levitated liquid droplets for the measurement of surface tension.

Michael Cimorelli | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Amsterdam
Home Institution: Drexel University   
Home Faculty Advisor: Steven Wrenn, Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Cancer Diagnosis Using Vesicle Derived Biomarkers
Field of Study: Chemical and Biological Engineering
Michael Cimorelli is a Ph.D. candidate in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department studying under the advisement of Dr. Steven Wrenn.  The broader strokes of his research focus on the development of the next generation ultrasound enhancing agent that is engineered for quantifying myocardial perfusion, monitoring ischemia, and detecting infarction. 
As a Ph.D. candidate in the Wrenn Lab, he specializes in medical imaging techniques, surface force interactions, and developing and characterizing lab-derived vesicles. With this GIRE Scholarship, he hopes to take his skill set that he’s honed in the Wrenn Lab and translate it to a new problem – developing a biomarker for kidney cancer from liquid biopsy by using Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging under the guidance of Dr. Rienk Nieuwland at the University of Amsterdam’s Academic Medical College.

Katherine Dowdell | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology 
Home Institution: University of Michigan
Home Faculty Advisor: Lutgarde Raskin, Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Ozonation & Biological Filtration on Mycobacteria in Water
Field of Study: Civil and Environmental Engineering  
Kate is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. She completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Colorado where she worked on biofiltration in drinking water systems. She then went on to work for five years in environmental engineering consulting before joining Professor Lutgarde Raskin’s group as a PhD student in September 2017. She is co-advised by Professor John LiPuma from the Department of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases.
Her research focuses on Infections caused by bacterial opportunistic pathogens which are a growing global concern. Opportunistic pathogens, such as Legionella pneumophila and nontuberculous mycobacteria, generally do not infect healthy individuals, but pose a serious risk for those with compromised immune systems. As evidence builds that drinking water may be a significant exposure route, research into how water treatment processes influence concentrations of opportunistic pathogens in treated drinking water is needed. Kate’s work is focused on how the use of disinfectants in drinking water treatment influences opportunistic pathogen populations in tap water.

April Gadsby | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at TU Delft 
Home Institution: Georgia Tech
Home Faculty Advisor: Kari Watkins, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research: Cyclist Stress in US and NL
Field of Study: Civil Engineering 
April Gadsby is a PhD Student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Civil Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her research uses an instrumented bike and eye tracking glasses to understand the causes of cyclist stress and how to design bike infrastructure that attracts riders. In her free time she is a competitive powerlifter and enjoys swing dancing.
At TU Delft, during Gadsby’s IIE-GIRE research grant, she will develop a robust measure of stress for cyclists. The measure will be developed using survey methods, eye tracking glasses, and bikes equipped with sensors to understand the cyclists’ surroundings and their influence on cyclist stress. While there, additional data will be collected to compare the gaze behavior of a cyclist in rush hour dense cyclist traffic that occurs in the Netherlands compared to cyclists mixed with rush hour vehicular traffic that occurs in the United States. The differences in culture between the Netherlands and the United States provides a key opportunity to develop a more robust understanding of cyclist stress and behavior. The results of this work are expected to advance understanding of cyclist behavior which can improve transportation modeling and simulation and to aid in bicycle infrastructure design to encourage more active transportation. 

Mike Jindra | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Technical University of Denmark
Home Institution: University of Wisconsin Madison 
Home Faculty Advisor: Brian Pfleger, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Adaptive Evolution & Fatty Alcohol Fermentation
Field of Study: Metabolic Engineering
The focus of Mike Jindra’s research is enzyme engineering for enabling biological routes to oleochemicals. Mike was born and raised in the great city of Cleveland, OH, and he his undergraduate degree at Ohio State in Columbus. He had several wonderful mentors during this time who were instrumental in training him to be a better engineer and a better person. Because of them, he is in a very fortunate position to take advantage of the opportunities available at UW-Madison.
Mike is excited and grateful for the IIE-GIRE award, this upcoming summer. He is looking forward to this collaboration, and proposes it will lead to promising insights for developing industrially relevant bioprocesses for production of oleochemicals.

Rebecca Mckenzie | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Technical University of Cambridge 
Home Institution: University of Pittsburgh  
Home Faculty Advisor: Aaron Batista, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research: Hybrid AI System for Epilepsy Seizure Detection
Field of Study: Bioengineering: Neuroscience / Artificial Intelligence
Rebecca received a BS degree in Mathematical Physics from SUNY Buffalo.  After working in research and industry at Brookhaven National Lab, she moved to Pittsburgh, PA, to pursue a career in artificial intelligence and robotics.  She began her graduate career as an MS student in Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh.  Her MS research investigated the application of neural networks to the problem of precisely localizing seizure foci in epilepsy patients.  This research provided a successful system that can be used as a tool by neurosurgeons.  She continues this research as a PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. 
Rebecca’s research will address several limitations on artificial intelligence-based seizure detection and localization in epilepsy patients.  She is developing a hybrid convolutional neural network utility that can accurately determine seizure initiation and localization in the cerebral cortex, using both the temporal as well as the spatial domain data for a patient EEG record. Also, the neural network is designed to retain successful identification results so the utility can improve its own accuracy in subsequent analyses of patient data, for a single patient over more than one recording session or from a number of patients.  

Peter Schwarzenberg | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Zurich 
Home Institution: Lehigh University   
Home Faculty Advisor: Hannah L. Dailey, Assistant Professor
IIE-GIRE Research: CT Scan Fracture Analysis of New Bone Fractures (in sheep)
Field of Study: Mechanical Engineering
Peter Schwarzenberg is a third year PhD student at Lehigh University studying Mechanical Engineering. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at Lehigh University. Under the direction of his PhD advisor, Dr. Hannah Dailey, his research is focused on modeling and analyzing orthopaedic trauma events such as bone fractures. Using engineering tools and skill sets, the Dailey Lab provides engineering analysis for improved clinical outcomes.
This project represents a continuation of a collaboration already begun between Lehigh University and the Musculoskeletal Research Unit (MSRU) at the University of Zurich. The IIE-GIRE program will allow Peter to travel to Zurich to further his research on large-scale preclinical orthopaedic models. During the course of the program, he will develop better constitutive mechanical models for the tissue that forms during the fracture healing process and translational methods for in vivo clinical modeling.

Emily Skiba | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Kyushu University   
Home Institution: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 
Home Faculty Advisor: Nicola H. Perry, Assistant Professor
IIE-GIRE Research: Pulsed Laser Deposition Variables on properties of STF thin films
Field of Study: Material Science and Engineering 
Emily Skiba is a graduate student in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her B.S in Physics from Loyola University, Chicago in 2016. Her current research includes the fabrication and characterization of mixed conducting oxides for application as cathode materials in solid oxide cell systems.
 Her current project, sponsored by IIE-GIRE scholarship, will consist of fabricating strontium titanium iron oxide thin films with optimal oxygen reduction kinetics through a novel, non-equilibrium, low temperature pulsed laser deposition (PLD) approach, followed by characterization and morphological transformation in situ. Specifically, the project seeks to tailor non-equilibrium structure evolution by understanding how PLD process variables can be modified to control resulting film structures and properties.

Brodrick Stigall | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at University of Melbourne
Home Institution: Clemson University  
Home Faculty Advisor: Kelly Caine, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research Project: Older Adults’ Perception/Use of Embodied Conversational Agents 
Field of Study: Human-Centered Computing  
Brodrick Stigall is a first-year Ph.D. student in the Human-Centered Computing. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from University of Tennessee and Master of Science in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, Brodrick spent 7 years working in E-Commerce at Fortune 500 companies International Paper Co. and AutoZone Inc. Both are located in his home town of Memphis, Tennessee.
Brodrick’s dream is to be research faculty at a premier academic institution. Through his example, he hopes to inspire minority students to pursue careers in STEM. Brodrick’s research focuses on virtual agents (also known as conversational agents and chatbots) which have the ability to dynamically change interaction with and adoption of technology especially among older adults (adults over 65). However little research has been done into how stereotyping of the agent itself can change those effects. This project is to evaluate the effects of stereotyping, specifically age stereotyping on human perception of conversational agents.

Matthew Turner | IIE-GIRE Fellow 2019 
IIE-GIRE Fellow at Kyoto University-Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI)
Home Institution: University of New Hampshire (UNH)   
Home Faculty Advisor: Majid Ghayoomi, Associate Professor
IIE-GIRE Research: Impact of Degree of Saturation in Soils to Seismic Response
Field of Study: Civil Engineering with emphasis in Geotechnical Engineering 
Matthew Turner is a Ph.D. student at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) studying civil engineering with an emphasis in geotechnical engineering. He graduated from UNH in 2018 with a B.Sc. degree in Civil Engineering. Throughout his time as an undergraduate he was an executive board member of the UNH Environmental Water Resources Institute, a professional development organization on campus. Additionally, throughout his summer’s, he was employed by the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Resources where he conducted inspections with both the Dam Bureau as well as the Hazardous Waste Remediation Bureau on hazardous waste generators and various lined/unlined landfill closures throughout the state. Outside of work and school he enjoy both mountain biking and skiing. After receiving his Ph.D. he hopes to pursue a Professional Engineering License while consulting for a private firm and to one-day return to academia as a Professor.  
 The title of Michael’s project is called “Seismic Ground Response Analysis of Sites with Variable Moisture Content due to Climate and Seasonal Hysteresis” and will be conducted at the Kyoto University-Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI). This project will investigate the effects of variation of moisture in soils on the response of geotechnical systems during earthquakes. The research process will include centrifuge physical modeling, response assessment of instrumented sites, and statistical uncertainty evaluation based on the numerical sensitivity analysis.