KAUST Ph.D. students Amal Hajjaj and Sherif Tella win best paper awards
KAUST Ph.D. students Sherif Tella (left) and Amal Hajjaj won best paper awards at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference in August.
KAUST Ph.D. students Amal Hajjaj and Sherif Tella, who are supervised by KAUST Associate Professor Mohammad Younis, principal investigator in the University's Nano/Micro Mechanics and Motion (NM3) lab, won best paper awards at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2017 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE 2017), which took place from August 6 to 9 in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
According to the ASME website, the conferences "highlighted emergent technologies that impact the critical engineering issues of product design and development, manufacturing and the management and integration of information systems throughout the product life-cycle." The events are important meetings for design engineers in academia, industry and government.
Tella's winning paper entitled Electrothermally Actuated Microbeams with Varying Stiffness won the best paper award under the 11th International Conference on Micro- and Nanosystems (MNS).
"I feel very great and happy for my achievement, and I appreciate the efforts of my co-author and supervisor," he said. "KAUST has given me great opportunities to work with state-of-the-art equipment in my dream academic career—this is my main motivation and has helped me to win the award."
Hajjaj's paper entitled Effect of Initial Curvature on the Static and Dynamic Behavior of MEMS Resonators won the best paper award under the 13th International Conference on Multibody Systems, Nonlinear Dynamics and Control (MSNDC).
"I presented my paper in front of a committee and lead scientists in the field," Hajjaj said. "It was really amazing when they announced the winner, and I was the first female student to win such a competition at the MSNDC conference."
"Working at KAUST gives me the opportunity to enjoy the freedom of pursuing curiosity-driven research and achieving my goals," she continued. "My achievements couldn't be attained without the endless support, encouragement and inspiration of my advisor Professor Younis."
- By Caitlin Clark, KAUST News
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