The Research Office and the IIT Chapter of Sigma Xi have announced the recipients of the 2014 Sigma Xi Research Awards. These awards recognize exemplary accomplishments in research, scholarship, and creative activity by IIT faculty members and graduate students.
The 2014 Sigma Xi recipients are:
Student Category- Arash Kalantari
Arash Kalantari is pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. During his time at IIT, Kalantari has been studying the relationship between mechanical complexity and robotic mobility. He made good progress and developed a novel robot called the Hybrid Terrestrial and Aerial Quadrotor (HyTAQ). In addition, Kalantari has produced three journal papers and seven conference papers on his work so far.
Junior Faculty Category- Kathiravan Krishnamurthy
Dr. Kathiravan Krishnamurthy is an assistant professor in the Department of Food Science and Nutrition. His research focuses on the application of novel food processing technologies for ensuring food safety. Krishnamurthy is an internationally acclaimed researcher in pulsed light processing, a novel food processing technology. He is a pioneer in this technology and made several significant contributions including identification of a new inactivation mechanism. Other research interests of Krishnamurthy include heat transfer, modeling, and simulation. Krishnamurthy authored or co-authored 25 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is an editorial board member of three international journals and his work has been widely cited. He has received many awards including “Gerald T. Gentry Award for Excellence in Graduate Research” from the Pennsylvania State University and “Outstanding Volunteer Award” from the Nonthermal Processing Division of the Institute of Food Technologists.
Senior Faculty Category- Ali Cinar
Dr. Ali Cinar is a Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. During the last ten years in addition to his faculty responsibilities he has served as Vice-Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate College. He has also served as director of two research centers at IIT. The complex systems and dynamics research center and the engineering center for diabetes research and education. Even with these administrative responsibilities he has managed an excellent research program. The Sigma Xi award is for his contributions to the modeling, simulation and control of biomedical systems. This includes agent based systems for understanding the growth of tissue and the use of control theory for regulating sugar and insulin levels in the artificial pancreas.
Senior Faculty Category- Carlo Segre
Dr. Carlo Segre is the Duchossois Leadership Professor of Physics at IIT. He has also been the President of the IIT chapter of Sigma Xi since 2005. His expertise and skills include x-ray diffraction, neutron diffraction and x-ray absorption spectroscopy. His most recent work deals with the development of a Nanoelectrofuel flow battery for electric vehicles. Segre established the IIT center for Synchrotron radiation research and instrumentation. The center went on to build five beam lines at the advanced photon source at Argonne National Laboratory.