2026 MMAE Poster Competition and Departmental Awards

The Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering at Illinois Tech held its annual MMAE Student Research Poster Competition and departmental awards ceremony on April 17, 2026.   

The MMAE Student Research Poster Competition is a longstanding tradition of the department, drawing keen interest and wide participation among students, faculty, and the Illinois Tech community.  

This year, 24 MMAE students presented posters displaying a wide variety of new and fascinating research projects.   

The recipient of the 2026 MMAE Distinguished Alumni Award was Michael Plesniak (ME ’83, M.S. ’84), professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at George Washington University. He presented a lecture, titled “Vortex Dynamics Downstream of a Surface Protuberance in Highly Pulsatile Flow Motivated by Human Speech Pathologies.” 

2026 MMAE Department Awards 

MMAE Distinguished Alumni Award—Michael Plesniak (BS ’83, MS ’84, ME) 

MMAE Excellence in Teaching Award—Assistant Teaching Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering John Bernhardt 

MMAE Excellence in Research Award—Professor of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Carrie Hall and Rowe Family Chair Professor in Sustainable Energy Leon Shaw 

MMAE Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award—Jonathan Horak (Ph.D. MAE Candidate) 

MMAE Outstanding Research Assistant Award—Sasindu Pinto (Ph.D. MAE Candidate) and Junquan Ou (Ph.D. MSE Candidate) 

MMAE Outstanding Service Award—Administrative Associate Lina Diaz

2026 Poster Competition Awards

Undergraduate Category 

First Place—Alec Weedman, “Reflected Signals, Revealed Surfaces: Using GNSS-IR Spectral Peaks to Decode Polar Terrain,” advised by Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Seebany Datta-Barua 

Second Place—Emiliano Mora, “Small Drones, Large Impact,” advised by Assistant Professor of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Nelson Rosa 

Third Place—Joo-Yeol Yoon, “Safe Autonomous Landing of a Mars Quadcopter,” advised by Assistant Professor of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Ersin Das

Master’s Category 

First Place—Jinchen Tang, “Demystifying the Fine Structure of a Heusler Phase Intermetallic Semiconductor: Mn2CoAl,” advised by Associate Professor of Materials Engineering Heng Wang 

Doctoral Category 

First Place—Oluwaseyi Omodara, “Multi-Mechanism Powder Spreader for Powder-Bed AM: Experimental and DEM Investigation of Non-Spherical Powder Spreading,” advised by Associate Professor of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Amir Mostafaei 

Second Place—Adwoa Adunyah, “A Degradation Aware Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy for Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” advised by Professor of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering Carrie Hall 

Third Place—Prashanth Tamilselvam, “Universal Scaling Relationship for the Frequency of Human Whistling,” advised by Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Francisco Ruiz   

The recipient of the AIAA Scholastic Achievement Award in 2025–2026 academic year is Anna Elena Sofia Sebastio (AE ’26). 

Photo: Group photo of students and faculty from the 2026 MMAE poster competition.