2025 Thermal and Fluids Engineering Award
Recognized by the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers (ASTFE) "for the development of high temperature air combustion technology and other contributions in combustion research that increase energy efficiency and reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions," Distinguished University Professor Ashwani Gupta is the recipient of the 2025 Thermal and Fluids Engineering Award awarded to a single individual for significant and sustained contributions to the field of Thermal and Fluids Engineering. Dr. Gupta's research includes work on an innovative technology that integrates near-critical CO2 for the liquefaction and extraction of biomass and municipal organic waste, a finalist for an Innovate Maryland 2025 Invention of the Year Award. In 2023, Dr. Gupta was inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
2025 Board of Regents Faculty Award
Katrina Groth performs cutting-edge research in development of methods to provide insights into dominant failure causes in novel hydrogen technologies, investigation of prognostics and health management techniques to support reliability monitoring and diagnosis of complex systems, and the creation of reliability data collection frameworks and algorithms. In addition to her research accomplishment, she has also been a leader in the IEA Hydrogen Technology Collaboration Program (TCP) Task on Hydrogen Safety, and she has advised or helped advise approximately 40 PhD students through her role as Director of the Reliability Engineering program. The Board of Regents Faculty Awards are the highest honor presented by the Board of Regents to exemplary faculty members within the University System of Maryland. Katrina's selection in the category of distinguished performance in scholarship and research follows her selection in 2024 for the Clark School Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award recognizing exceptionally strong and influential research accomplishments by early-career faculty.
2025 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
On January 14, 2025, the White House announced the selection by President Biden of Clark Faculty Fellow Damena Agonafer for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), "the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers early in their careers." Damena's selection, which was facilitated by the National Science Foundation, is based on his CAREER award titled "CAREER: Fundamental Transport Mechanisms of Evaporation From Non-Axisymmetric Droplets Confined on Hollow Micropillars Structures." Dr. Agonafer's research includes work on an innovative technology for efficient microchannel cooling for high-powered electronics, winner of the Innovate Maryland 2025 Invention of the Year Award in the category of the Physical Sciences.
2025 E. Robert Kent Outstanding Teaching Award for Junior Faculty
For his unwavering dedication to high-quality teaching and inspiring application of remarkable creativity to highly innovative curricular design and delivery in both undergraduate and graduate engineering courses, Ryan Sochol is the 2025 recipient of the E. Robert Kent Outstanding Teaching Award for Junior Faculty in the A.J. Clark School of Engineering. His development of a course in computer-aided design and machine design based on a popular video game series shows the power of gamified engineering education to inspire new generations of engineers. Under his guidance, undergraduate students in his Vertically Integrated Projects section on 3D-Printed Video Game-Playing Soft Robots have had their work accepted for presentation at international conferences on miniaturized technology for applications in chemistry and the life sciences.
2025 Provost's Award for Professional Track Faculty Excellence in Research
Yunho Hwang contributions to reducing the environmental impact of air-conditioning and refrigeration systems by enhancing energy efficiency and using eco-friendly fluids and his leadership in both fundamental and applied research with considerable practical impact is the basis for his selection for a 2025 Provost's Award for Professional Track Faculty Excellence in Research. Dr. Hwang, who leads the Center for Environmental Energy Engineering Energy Efficiency and Heat Pumps (EEHP) Consortium, received the 2023 Gustav Lorentzen Medal from the International Institute of Refrigeration. His recent work includes the development of an near-isothermal compression prototype to improve an air-conditioner’s overall efficiency and elastocaloric solid-state cooling technology with zero direct global warming emissions.
2024 Southeastern Universities Research Association Early Career Scientist Award
Avik Dutt's research in quantum engineering, photonics, and nonlinear optics is leading the way to the discovery of new fundamental phenomena or exotic phases of light and matter that can form the backbone of future quantum computing technologies. Ultra-fast computing and ultraprecise sensing are among the potential applications of Dr. Dutt's work. The SURA Early Career Scientist Award recognizes an early-career scientist who has generated a sufficient volume of scholarship of high quality and is emerging in their field as a leader and acknowledged as such by their peers. For his work, Dr. Dutt was awarded an NSF CAREER award titled "Nanophotonic synthetic dimensions for scalable analog Hamiltonian simulators and sensing" from the Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems.
2024 C.E. Taylor Award
Hugh Bruck's selection by the Society for Experimental Mechanics for the C.E. Taylor Award is in recognition of his pioneering technical contributions in image correlation development; material characterization for biosystems, metals and advanced composites; and dedicated service to the Society. Bruck's 1989 paper "Digital image correlation using Newton-Raphson method of partial differential correction" in the journal Experimental Mechanics has recorded close to 2,000 citations on Google Scholar.
2024 Dean’s Outstanding Performance Award for Professional Track Faculty
Vikrant Aute’s research contributions are considered pivotal in the development and enhancement of next-generation heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigerant (HVAC&R) systems and components. Highlights include leading the development of novel shape-optimized air-to-refrigerant heat exchangers that are 20–40% better performing than the current state of the art. Aute has gained industry-wide recognition for spearheading the development of modeling and optimization platforms that transform the way HVAC&R components and systems are designed. The Outstanding Performance Award for Professional Track Faculty recognizes exceptionally influential accomplishments in research and/or teaching.
2024 American Society of Mechanical Engineers Henry Hess Early Career Publication Award
Eleonora Tubaldi's research aims to discover ways to program synthetic soft materials to exhibit embodied intelligence, the ability of a material or structure to sense and respond to its environment using electronics-free haptic feedback. Using principles of bioinspired design, Tubaldi is learning from the way nature has found solutions to unique design challenges. The Henry Hess Early Career Publication Award recognizes the best original technical paper presented to or published by the Society during the two calendar years prior to the year of award by an early-career ASME Member.
Provost's 2024 Do Good Innovator Awards
Teng Li's work is rooted in a social impact-oriented approach, focused on developing technology that can be used by the communities that need it most. Motivated by the impact of water scarcity on communities worldwide, he is leading a team to address global water scarcity through the development of atmospheric water harvesting technologies that require no external power source. The Provost’s Do Good Innovator Awards recognize excellence in creating, nurturing, expanding, and amplifying social impact through education, programs, and research, both inside and outside the classroom.
2023-2025 Wilson H. Elkins Professorship
Miao Yu's research is advancing new scientific paradigms to uncover the rules governing marine ecosystem dynamics and facilitate sustainable aquaculture development through transformative human-ecosystem interactions, ultimately addressing the grand challenge of global ecosystem sustainability. She is the lead investigator on a $10M USDA NIFA Sustainable Agricultural Systems grant aiming to transform shellfish farming with smart technology and management practices for sustainable production. Her selection for the University of Maryland System Wilson H. Elkins Professorship recognizes her desire and ability to lead and inspire undergraduate and graduate students and to show significant achievement beyond mechanical engineering.
2023 Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award
For his outstanding scholarly accomplishment and demonstrated excellence in teaching, Don DeVoe was selected for the UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award. Devoe's research concerns microfluidic systems for generating, controlling, and analyzing large numbers of discrete fluid volumes for applications in biology and biomedicine, for example using microfluidic vortex focusing to allow fine control of the assembly of liposomes as nanoscale drug carriers. In his project-based course Mechatronics and the Internet of Things, DeVoe prepares students to combine sensors, actuators, computation, and communication to create integrated objects capable of robust internet-based interfacing.
2023 Board of Regents Award for Excellence in Mentoring
Michel Cukier directs the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students Living and Learning Program, which he started in 2013. The two-year honors academic experience revolves around cybersecurity and gives students the opportunity to learn hands-on technical and non-technical aspects of the field within a close-knit community. The Board of Regents Excellence in Mentoring Award recognizes his extraordinary achievement in having created such a unique, multidisciplinary, successful program for educating the nation’s future cybersecurity leader.
Top