Engineering students present research at year-end poster contest

Winners selected by faculty and industry partners

Graduate students in the School of Engineering recently competed against each other in the third-annual research poster competition at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

The competition included 16 PhD and 16 Master of Applied Science students, who presented everything from bendable cement to agricultural analysis and engineered textile.

PhD student Nilufar Islam and MASc student Mostafizur Rahaman won first place in their respective categories.

Rahaman won his category and the $300 cash prize for his research poster, High Speed Motion Control of XY Table. His supervisor is Dr. Rudolf Seethaler, an associate professor in mechanical engineering.

For her research presentation, Optimizing Booster Stations in Small Water Distribution Networks: A Water Quality Index Approach, Islam won the first-place Donald McLean Roberts Award and the $500 cash prize, donated by School of Engineering Professor Dr. Deborah Roberts. Islam’s supervisors, both civil engineers, are UBC Associate Professor Dr. Rehan Sadiq and Dr. Manuel J. Rodriguez, a professor at Laval University.

“My research is about managing water quality in smaller water distribution networks using booster chlorination,” Islam explains. “The poster was from a small part of my research, where we proposed an optimization scheme to locate the booster stations with limited data and also without hiring highly technical personnel.

“The research is expected to be beneficial for smaller communities such as the First Nations communities, where we do have frequent boil water advisories but limited resources to manage the overall water quality.”

Each year, engineering graduate students display their current and original research work on large posters. Students are judged on their research and presentation of information by UBC faculty and industry partners. Monetary awards are given to the top presenters along with certificates of merit.

More than 100 people attended the March 28^th event, including engineers from local companies, industry partners, UBC Okanagan faculty, staff, and students. Special guests included Miriam Grant, Vice Provost Research at UBC Okanagan and guest speaker Malcolm Metcalfe, founder and C.T.O. of ENBALA Power Networks.

As elected chair of the Engineering Graduate Students’ Society (EGSS), Islam said it was just as rewarding to organize the event as it was to win the competition.

“I have to thank my friends and colleagues who told me, ‘Nilufar, you should win this year!’ — which gave me confidence when I was so tired from organizing the event,” she says. “And many thanks to EGSS members, especially Shelir Ebrahimi, Ovee Zaman, Muntasir Billah, and Golam Kabir.”

The 2012-13 Poster Competition winners:

PhD CATEGORY

1st Place: Donald McLean Roberts Award, $500, donated by Dr. Deborah Roberts

Student name: Nilufar Islam

Supervisors: Dr. Rehan Sadiq and Dr. Manuel J. Rodriguez

Poster title: Optimizing Booster Stations in Small Water Distribution Networks: A Water Quality Index Approach

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2nd Place: $300 | Student name: Anant Parghi

Supervisor: Dr. M. Shahria Alam

Poster title: Physical and Mechanical Properties of Cementitious Composites Containing Recycled Glass Powder (RGP) and Styrene Butadiene Rubber (SBR) for Improvement of Sustainability

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3rd Place: $200 | Student name: Ouldooz Balazadegan

Supervisor: Dr. Lukas Bichler

Poster title: Characterization of Spark Plasma Sintered YSZ + (0 –2wt %) Single Wall-CNT Composites

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4th Place: Honourable Mention | Student name: Mojtaba Komeili

Supervisor: Dr. Abbas S. Milani

Poster title: Towards a General-purpose Finite Element Model for the Simulation of Woven Fabrics Deformation During Forming Processes

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MASc CATEGORY

1st Place: $300 | Student name: Mostafizur Rahaman

Supervisor: Dr. Rudolf Seethaler

Poster title: High Speed Motion Control of XY Table

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2nd Place: $200 | Student name: David Kadish

Supervisors: Dr. Homayoun Najjaran and Dr. Aleksandra Dulic

Poster title: Context-Dependent Fusion for Fruit Classification

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3rd Place: $100 | Student name: Karen D. Robles Arellano

Supervisor: Dr. Lukas Bichler

Poster title: Compressive Creep of SPS-Processed Cubic YSZ Doped with CeO2 and La2O3

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4th Place: Honourable Mention | Student name: Nima Moazen

Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Johnson

Poster title: Investigation of Waveguide Excitation Structures for Incorporation into a Wideband Feed Antenna