Student Features for September 2016

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Seonyeong Park, Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering

Seonyeong Park
Seonyeong Park

Park, a student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, represented VCU at the 2016 FedEx Express Women’s Education Conference in Memphis, Tennessee, this summer.

The conference on “Finding your passion” included presentations and panel discussions about millennials, women professionals’ passion and the role of women leaders in modern culture. As part of the millennial panel, Park spoke about millennials’ expectations for their work, their passion, personal growth and diversity in the workplace.

“I talked about my passion for research,” Park said. “I discussed how I took a risk to come to the U.S. to pursue a Ph.D. program. I also talked about how I dealt with transition within my research fields, going from network, protocol and cyber security to machine learning and medical imaging. After the panel talk, I was pleased that people came to me and told me my speech inspired them.”

Hunter Andrews, Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering Doctoral Student, School of Engineering

Hunter Andrews
Hunter Andrews

Andrews has received an award in the Undergraduate Competition of the Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fuel Cycle Technologies.

He presented his award-winning research paper, “Measurement and Analysis of Exchange Current Density of Lanthanides in LiCl-KCl Eutectic Salt,” at the American Nuclear Society Student Conference in April.

In order to be successful and retain its leadership role in nuclear technologies, the United States must foster creativity and breakthrough achievements to develop tomorrow’s nuclear technologies. The Department of Energy has long recognized that university students are an important source of breakthrough solutions and a key component in meeting its long-term goals. The Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards program was developed for this purpose.

The program awarded 17 prizes in 2016 for student publications relevant to the nuclear fuel cycle.

For more information on the Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards program, visit http://www.fuelcycleinnovations.org.

Diya Abraham, Subhash Jaini, Garima Oza, Praveen Sreepuram and Khai Wisler, Decision Analytics Program, Department of Supply Chain Management and Analytics, School of Business

From left: Garma Oza, Diya Abraham, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Praveen Sreepuram, Khai Wisler and Subhash Jaini.
From left: Garma Oza, Diya Abraham, Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Praveen Sreepuram, Khai Wisler and Subhash Jaini.

The five Decision Analytics students formed a team that is one of five finalists for the Governor's Workforce Innovation Datathon Challenge.

In August, the team faced off against 16 teams from across the state in the two-day live analytics challenge. The teams had two days to take a new, highly enriched and curated Jobs Demand dataset and turn it into actionable information to support the governor’s goal of filling the more than 250,000 open jobs in Virginia’s postindustrial service economy.

Five teams from various businesses and professional organizations, including the VCU students, were selected to move to the pitching and judging round, which will happen Sept. 7.

Two of the other top five teams have direct connections to the School of Business’ Decision Analytics Program. Spenser Ferguson, Decision Analytics Professional Track Class of 2016, is on one of the final teams and Bill Cannell, an adjunct professor in the professional track, is on the defending champion VDOT team.

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