UCSB Mechanical Engineering Thesis Research Areas

 

Affiliated UCSB Research Centers

Center for Control, Dynamical Systems and Computation
Materials Research Laboratory
Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
California Nanosystems Institute
Technology Management Program
Center for Stem Cell Biology and Engineering

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ME Best PhD Thesis Award

This ME award recognizes a PhD student judged to have written the best PhD thesis in the area of Mechanical Engineering over the period of evaluation. The Award consists of a $1000 prize and award to be presented no more often than annually at the ME Graduate Convocation. 

Theses will be evaluated based on their originality, technical excellence, anticipated impact, and clarity. This award is intended to promote continued research excellence in the Department and recognize and publicize work of exceptional quality by our ME students.

Guidelines

Eligibility

A UCSB PhD student that graduated under the supervision of a faculty member in the Mechanical Engineering Department.

Timing

  1. The nomination window closes at the end of September each year.
  2. The filing date for thesis should be within the past three years prior to nomination closing date. 

Nomination 

For a thesis to be nominated, the following material should be sent to the Graduate Faculty Chair and Student Affairs Manager  by September 30th:

  1. A nomination letter from the advisor describing the originality and significance of the work
  2. An electronic copy of the thesis
  3. Thesis filing date

Evaluation procedure

A award selection committee will be constituted every year by the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Faculty Chair after nominations are received. The committee will typically consist of 3 suitably selected faculty members. 

Thesis Work

Best PhD Thesis Award

  • 2025: Alexander (Sasha) Davydov (advisor: Francesco Bullo), Contraction Theory in Control, learning and Optimization
  • 2024: Wenkai Ouyang, (advisor: Bolin Liao), Probing Nanoscale Carrier Transport for Renewable Energy Applications
  • 2023: Nicholas Naclerio, (advisor: Elliot Hawkes), Leveraging compliance and anisotropy to address robotic challenges
  • 2022: Daniil Bochkov, (advisors: Frederic Gibou), Computational methods for solidification of multicomponent materials and moving boundary problems in physics of inhomogeneous polymers
  • 2021: Fernando Temprano-Coleto (advisor: Frederic Gibou & Paolo Luzzatto-Fegiz), Slip in the Presence of Surfactants: Applications to Superhydrophobic Drag Reduction
  • 2020: Raphael Ouillon (advisor: Eckart Meiburg), Direct Numerical Simulations of Multiphase, Stratified, Environmental Fluid Flows 
  • 2019: Alexander Eden (advisor: Carl Meinhart), Investigating Electrokinetic and Electrochemical Phenomena in Confined Geometries through Multiphyscial Modeling
  • 2018: Hassan Arbabi (advisor: Igor Mezic), Koopman Spectral Analysis and Study of Mixing in Incompressible Flows
  • 2017: Jackson Travis Del Bonis-O'Donnell, (advisor: Sumita Pennathur), DNA-Stabilized Fluorescent Silver Nanoclusters: A Versatile Nanomaterial for the Specific Detection of DNA
  • 2016: Dan Wilson, (advisor: Jeff Moehlis), Model Reduction for Treatment of Neurological Diseases and Cardiac Arrhythmias
  • 2015: Florian Doefler, (advisor: Francesco Bullo), Dynamics and Control in Power Grids and Complex Oscillator Network
  • 2014: Seyed Mohammad Mirzadeh, (advisor: Frederic Gibou), Discretization of Poisson-Boltzmann and Poisson-Nernst-Planck Equations with Applications to Electrochemical Systems
  • 2012: Fabio Pasqualetti, (advisor: Francesco Bullo), Secure Control Systems: A Control-Theoretic Approach to Cyber-Physical Security
  • 2011: Brian Ferguson, (advisor: Tom Soh), Development of Novel Integrated Microfluidic Electrochemical Point-of-Care Sensors for Pathogen Detection and Continuous Drug Monitoring
  • 2010: Per Danzl, (advisor: Jeff Moehlis), Dynamical Characterization and Feedback Control of Oscillatory Neural Systems
  • 2009: Brian Piorek, (advisor: Carl Meinhart), Transport Properties in Free Surface Fluidics
  • 2008: Brian Munsky, (advisor: Mustafa Khammash), The Finite State Projection for the Solution of the Master Equation and its Applications to Stochastic Gene Regulatory Networks
  • 2007: Vineet Birman, (advisor: Eckart Meiburg), Topics in Gravity and Turbidity Current Research
  • 2006: Emily Parker, (advisor: Noel McDonald), Bulk Micromachined Titanium Microneedles for Minimally Invasive Drug Delivery
  • 2005: Hana El-Samad, (advisor: Mustafa Khammash), Mechanisms of noise exploitation in gene regulatory networks: Biological design principles for robustness, performance, and selective interactions with noise