Sophomore Michael Armani Receives ASME Scholarship

At a reception following the A. James Clark School of Engineering Commencement Exercises on May 23, 2003, Mechanical Engineering sophomore Michael Armani was presented with an ASME Fuels and Combustion Technologies (FACT) Division & Power Division Student Scholarship. Criteria for selection included, but was not limited to, the student's GPA, the institution's geographical location, the academic merit of the student, the number of energy and FACT/Power related courses taken by the student, the student's achievement, leadership, participation and interest, the university's course offerings and research activities available to undergraduates, and one recommendation letter from the student advisor. The scholarship was founded to encourage and promote involvement and of participation of young engineers in the Society and its technical divisions. ASME states that an effective way of accomplishing this is to enthuse them while they are still students and expose them to ASME, encourage them to become member of their society in the profession, and provide a forum to meet their colleagues and professionals in the field.

Mr. Armani has gained a great deal of hands-on experience in mechanical engineering by conducting research and working on many projects. To date, he has made significant advances towards fully understanding combustion regimes in a Kerosene Spray Flame, which is a powerful facility that enables researchers to reduce pollutants. Furthermore, he has been working towards creating a non-invasive particle control system by means of a computational fluid dynamics model. He also has been working on optimizing a two-stroke engine mounted to a mountain bike. In addition, he hopes to participate in the Darpa Grand Challenge, an automated robotics competition with a 200 mile path. Academically, Michael is interested in inspiring his fellow students to pursue undergraduate research positions; to do so, he has been leading a section of the Honors 200 research colloquium at the University of Maryland. Michael's future plans include studying biomechanical engineering in graduate school and becoming a professor in the field.

Published May 23, 2003