Students
Asaiah Gifford, a mechanical engineering student graduating this spring, has been selected by the Colorado Engineering Council to receive this year’s Silver Medal Award. One of the state’s top honors for undergraduate engineers, the Silver Medal recognizes students who embody the values of academic excellence, personal integrity, professionalism and community service.
Nine students from the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering have earned graduating student awards from the College of Engineering and Applied Science in 2026. These awards honor seniors who are nominated by faculty, staff or fellow students for their outstanding contributions to the college and campus community.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized Blake Maly, a graduate student in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at 91´«Ă˝, with a Graduate Research Fellowship Program award. These major awards honor and support outstanding graduate students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.
A tightly packed ball of office staples can be surprisingly strong. Try to pull it apart and the tangled metal resists like a solid object. But with the right movement or vibration, that same bundle can quickly fall back into loose pieces. A team of engineers and materials scientists in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering at 91´«Ă˝ are exploring how this uncanny combination of strength and flexibility could inspire a new class of materials built on interlocking particles.
PhD student Rylan Hodgson recently created a video that won the American Physical Society's (APS) 2026 Gallery of Soft Matter contest at the APS Global Physics Summit. The video demonstrates a unique view of the dynamics of granular flow with a rolling drum experiment that could one day be used to reveal key information about the mechanics and behavior of avalanches.
Student-athlete James Overberg has designed and developed a custom sauna that is crucial for helping endurance athletes recover from intense exercise. The new technology is now a permanent part of the Endurance Lab located in the Ford Indoor Practice Facility where it will assist Colorado student-athletes for years to come.
Starting in fall 2026, the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering is rolling out two major curriculum changes—guided by student feedback—that aim to rebalance credit allocation and streamline degree requirements. Janet Tsai, associate teaching professor and associate chair for undergraduate education, said the changes will help improve student learning experiences for all current and prospective students.
Professor Victor Bright, Professor Emeritus Alan Greenberg and PhD student Mo Zohrabi have helped develop a laser-based imaging method called stimulated Raman scattering to improve the performance of desalination plants by allowing real-time detection of membrane fouling. The advance could help make desalination more efficient and reliable as global demand for clean water rises.
PhD student Laura Shannon, alongside Professors Greg Rieker and Peter Hamlington are setting fires inside wind tunnels to gain a better understanding of how fire spreads across different terrain. The team says their findings could help keep communities safer in a world where climate-driven wildfire is becoming more common—and more dangerous.
Soil is comprised of an intricate network of bacteria and other microbes that humans depend on, but this complex environmental system is constantly shifting, making it difficult for scientists to measure. Associate Professor Gregory Whiting and his team of researchers are developing reliable, inexpensive and easy-to-deploy sensors that monitor soil in real time to help farmers optimize their use of fertilizers, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money in the process.