Seniors honored for exceptional work

Four seniors at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) were lauded for diligence and innovation, even under the very challenging circumstances they faced following the campus closure in mid-March.  

The four winners of the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Engineering Projects were selected by faculty members for having the best projects in Engineering Design Projects (ES 100), a yearlong capstone course for seniors in the S.B. engineering program. Each student in the course designs and completes a creative project that solves a specific, real-world problem.

In presenting the awards, SEAS Dean Frank Doyle noted that ES 100 is “one of the most demanding courses engineering students take during their Harvard careers—in a normal year. But as of March 10, this has been anything but a normal year. The resilience, dedication, and stick-to-itiveness of the students we honor today is admirable. You persevered under challenging circumstances.”

The award winners were:

• Aidan Crawford, environmental science and engineering, for his project “A Modeling System to Assess the Magnitude and Predictability of Changes in Tropical Cyclone Tracks due to Marine Cloud Brightening Geoengineering (MCB)” (advisor: David Keith, Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics)
• Andrew Meersand, mechanical engineering, for his project “An Optimization of Carbon Electrodes for Flow Batteries” (advisor: Michael Aziz, Gene and Tracy Sykes Professor of Materials and Energy Technologies)
• Cathy Wang, engineering sciences - bioengineering, for her project “Engineering Alginate Scaffolds for Controlled Hydrogel Degradation and Delivery of Tendon-Derived Cells” (advisors: David Mooney, Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering, and Benjamin Freedman, Research Associate in Bioengineering)
• Nicolas Weninger, electrical engineering, for his project “Electro-Acoustic Modulation of Surface Acoustic Waves on Thin-Film Lithium Niobate Substrate” (advisors: Marko Loncar, Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Linbo Shao, postdoctoral fellow in applied physics)

Each finalist will receive a certificate and $500.

In addition, the following students received honorable mention awards:

• Adriano Borsa – engineering sciences – bioengineering
• Daniel Chang – environmental science and engineering
• Robert Collins – mechanical engineering
• Charlie Colt-Simonds – electrical engineering
• Alexander Giglio – mechanical engineering
• Colin Harvey – engineering sciences – bioengineering
• Darrell Huang – electrical engineering
• Rohan Jha – engineering sciences - bioengineering
• Anthony Kenny – electrical engineering
• Cameron Maltman – mechanical engineering
• Rainy Michelsen – mechanical engineering
• Michelle Walsh – engineering sciences - bioengineering