Dan E. Wells Outstanding Dissertation Award - Past Winners
Spring 2025
Vuong Dustin Nguyen
Advisor: Shishir Shah
Department of Computer Science
Title: Towards Robust Person Re-Identification: Learning Invariant Features Under Clothing Changes and Occlusions
Nina Zamani (Honorable Mention)
Advisor: Michael Murphy
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Title: From Friction to Decarbonation: Unraveling Carbonate Rock Dynamics Under Seismic Velocity
Past Winners
Fall 2024
Yu-Huan Hsieh
Advisor: John Suppe
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Title: From the Foreland and Retroarc Thrust Belts to the Mantle Transition Zone: First Multi-scale Retrodeformable Transect of the Active 90 mm/yr Taiwan Arc-continent Collision
Spring 2024
Xin Shi
Advisor: Zhifeng Ren
Department of Physics
Title: Advancing Nontoxic, Antimony-based 1–2–2-type Thermoelectric Zintls
Summer/Fall 2023
Ritu Bohat
Advisor: Weiyi Peng
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
Title: Targeting PI3K Isoforms to Improve Effectiveness of T cells Mediated Immunotherapy
Chenggang Jiang (Honorable Mention)
Advisor: Thomas Teets
Department of Chemistry
Title: Strategies to Optimize Photophysical Properties in Cyclometalated Iridium Complexes
Spring 2023
Shruti Hariyani
Advisor: Jakoah Brgoch
Department of Chemistry
Title: Expanding the Crystal Chemistry of Rare-Earth Substituted Oxide and Mixed Anion Inorganic Phosphors
Summer/Fall 2022
Xiaolong Wei
Advisor: Jiajia Sun
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Title: Uncertainty Quantification in Geophysical Inversion and Geological Differentiation
Spring 2022
Spencer Fuston
Advisor: Jonny Wu
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Title: Reconciling North American Tectonics with the Deep Mantle through Structurally Unfolding Subducted Slabs and Mantle Convection Modeling
Noah Luecke (Honorable Mention)
Advisor: Kerri Crawford
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
Title: Roots, Shoots, and Seeds, a Plant Microbe Interaction Tryptic: From Sea to Summit
Summer/Fall 2021
Jamie M. Karthein
Advisor: Claudia Ratti
Department of Physics
Title: Equation of State and Net-charge Fluctuations for Strongly-interacting Matter
Spring 2021
Ya Zhuo
Advisor: Jakoah Brgoch
Department of Chemistry
Title: Developing Rare-Earth Substituted Inorganic Phosphors Through Machine Learning
Neil Jerome Egarguin (Honorable Mention)
Advisor: Daniel Onofrei
Department of Mathematics
Title: Active Control of Exterior Wavefields and Applications
Geethal Amila Udalamatta Gamage (Honorable Mention)
Advisor: Zhifeng Ren
Department of Physics
Title: Achieving Ultrahigh Thermal Conductivity and Carrier Mobility in Boron Arsenide Single Crystals
Summer/Fall 2020
Riddhiman Medhi
Advisor: Randy Lee
Department of Chemistry
Title: Enhancing the Scope of Metal Oxide Nanoparticles via Doping and Plasmonic Coupling
Spring 2020
Jiaxuan Li
Advisor: Yingcai Zheng
Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
Title: Inverting In-situ Anisotropy in Global Subduction Slabs Using Deep Earthquakes and Imaging Binary Mixtures and Fractures
Fall 2019
Naghmeh Hassanzadeh Khayyat
Advisor: Stuart Dryer
Department of Biology & Biochemistry
Title: Regulation and Dysregulation of TRPC6 Channels in Podocytes
Spring 2019
Aria Mansouri Tehrani
Advisor: Jakoah Brgoch
Department of Chemistry
Title: Development of Sustainable Superhard Materials
Chenggang Jiang (Honorable Mention)
Advisor: Thomas Teets
Department of Chemistry
Title: Strategies to Optimize Photophysical Properties in Cyclometalated Iridium Complexes