Technology Enhances the Arts
This project aims to improve the lives of over 300 million colorblind individuals and 2.2 billion people with visual impairments worldwide. Vision loss often leads to social and psychologica…
Systems Software
Increased reliance of societal operations on artificial intelligence (AI) image recognition models renders them vulnerable to security risks from adversarial attacks. These attacks manipulat…
Physics and Astronomy
Tidal tails form in open clusters due to two-body relaxation and gas expulsion (Kroupa et al., ApJ, 2024). Mapping tidal tail star trajectories provides key insights into understanding open…
Behavioral and Social Sciences
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic neurodegenerative disorder affecting over 10 million people worldwide. Gait impairments are a key indicator of brain-body dysfunction in PD. However, ea…
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Advancements in materials science have driven technological progress, yet discovering new materials remains challenging due to resource-intensive laboratory experiments, costly characterizat…
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Ornithopters have never fully replicated the efficiency of birds, which rely on complex kinematics that integrate thrust, lift, drag, and weight to optimize flight efficiency (Landell-Mills,…
Materials Science
As plastic pollution worsens, companies have begun searching for green plastics that last long but degrade naturally. Natural fiber composites, when paired with biodegradable resins like epo…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
In today's day and age, our world has been plunged into an energy crisis. Current clean energy solutions rely on lithium-ion batteries made with cobalt and lithium. These minerals are proble…
Biomedical and Health Sciences
Congenital heart defects (CHDs) refer to structural defects in the heart that are present at birth. Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) is the most complex CHD and occurs when the left si…
Environmental Engineering
Water pollution is a global issue, with sources ranging from industrialization and agricultural activities, to natural disasters like wildfires. These fires are especially concerning as they…
Biomedical Engineering
Traditional auscultation devices and methods have inherent limitations in spatially localizing body sounds and suppressing interference—restricting their diagnostic potential. This project d…
Technology Enhances the Arts
Communication between the hearing impaired and the general people has long been an unresolved issue. Although sign language can solve this problem to some extent, sign language becomes ineff…
Microbiology
First Award
Plant litter decomposition is a key ecological process that plays a vital role in the global carbon cycle. While the effect of soil microbes on decomposition has been well studied, the role…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Amid the increasing threat of wildfires driven by extreme weather events, the imperative development of rapid and efficient fire prediction models becomes evident for successful evacuation,…
Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Deep neural networks are used in the medical industry as tools to diagnose skin cancer from photographic images and detect the severity of diabetic retinopathy. Alongside these steps in medi…
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics
Second Award
Over 130,000 aging steel bridges in the United States are at risk from corrosion and structural issues. More efficient and thorough inspection methods are necessary to avoid future disasters…
Biomedical Engineering
My work proposes a state-of-the-art vision system to support mobility and navigation for the VI community using both acoustic and haptic signals that shall cost <$300. My work uses a novel i…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Marshes are known for their ability to filter pollutants, excess nutrients and disease-causing organisms from freshwater surface runoffs (Vernberg, 1993). This study evaluates whether simila…
Engineering Technology: Statics & Dynamics
Third Award
Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can aid lifeguards as 82% of ocean-related deaths in California occur at unprotected beaches, and 90% of drownings occur at low- and mid-income cou…
Physics and Astronomy
Fourth Award
Studying the Radial Velocity (RV) of stars led to the first definitive detection of an exoplanet in 1995 and has since contributed to the discovery of several thousand exoplanets. Cross-corr…
Physics and Astronomy
Wired power transmission necessitates costly infrastructure. Wireless power transmission could be an alternative, but is limited by substantial energy loss. This project develops a novel Wir…
Biomedical Engineering
Amblyopia, a vision development disorder, causes more vision loss in children than all other reasons combined. Amblyopia can be treated before 10 years of age when visual pathways of the bra…
Energy: Sustainable Materials and Design
Second Award
Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) poses uncertainty in its contribution to renewable energy due to the lack of a comprehensive design . The technology is in its early stages, requiring significant…
Materials Science
Blood clots compromise the efficacy of blood-contacting medical implants as well as the health of the patients whose lives they sustain. Commonly used antithrombotic drugs or coatings can ca…
Translational Medical Science
The inability of deep learning (DL) models to explain their output, known as the AI “Black Box” problem, greatly hinders clinical adoption of DL models in healthcare. This study is the first…
Earth and Environmental Sciences
Second Award
To combat marine biotoxin contamination that threatens California’s $15-million shellfish industry, this research establishes the first California Marine Biotoxin Management System (CABMS),…
Environmental Engineering
Recognizing CO2’s pivotal role in climate change, and soil carbon as the major active pool of terrestrial carbon, Carboflux introduces a novel method to quantify soil carbon flux, which meas…
Cellular and Molecular Biology
Natural killer (NK) cells are involved in surveillance and killing of tumor cells. Although classically part of innate immunity, I and others have identified a subset of NK cells with adapti…
Technology Enhances the Arts
Astrophysicists seek methods of effectively conveying complex concepts to non-scientific audiences. Sonification, or the conversion of information into audio, improves the accessibility of t…
Computational Biology and Bioinformatics
Second Award
Conventionally, tumorigenesis is understood as a gradual accumulation of genetic mutations. Yet, chromoplexy rearrangements (ChRs) are a mutational phenomenon characterized by highly complex…