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 Dr. Michael Plesniak (BS ’83, MS ’84, ME), 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 Protruberance in Highly Pulsatile Flow Motivated by Human Speech Pathologies.”

2026 MMAE Department Awards

• MMAE Distinguished Alumni Award—Dr. Michael Plesniak (BS ’83, MS ’84, ME)
• MMAE Excellence in Teaching Award—Dr. John Bernhardt
• MMAE Excellence in Research Award—Dr. Carrie Hall and Dr. 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,” advisor Dr. Seebany Datta-Barua
• Second place—Emiliano Mora, “Small Drones, Large Impact,” advisor Dr. Nelson Rosa
• Third place—Joo-Yeol Yoon, “Safe Autonomous Landing of a Mars Quadcopter,” advisor Dr. Ersin Das

Master’s category

• First place—Jinchen Tang, “Demystifying the Fine Structure of a Heusler Phase Intermetallic Semiconductor: Mn2CoAl,” advisor Dr. 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,” advisor Dr. Amir Mostafaei
• Second place—Adwoa Adunyah, “A Degradation Aware Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy for Fuel Cell Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” Dr. Carrie Hall
• Third place—Prashanth Tamilselvam, “Universal Scaling Relationship for the Frequency of Human Whistling,” advisor Dr. Francisco Ruiz

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