[Upbeat music]
[University at Buffalo, MAE Student Excellence, 2019]
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
[Chris Gnam, Undergraduate Researcher Award] My name is Chris Gnam, aerospace engineering student here, winning the
Undergraduate Researcher Award. That's mostly for all of the work
that I have done with the University at Buffalo Nanosatellite Laboratory.
I tried to figure out what to get involved with and I ended up finding the Nanosat Lab and
Dr. Crassidis. He's really taking me under his wing and helped me kind of figure out
what I wanted to do, so here I am five years later graduating in aerospace engineering
and mathematics, and couldn't be happier with that.
I'll be staying here for a PhD, studying under Dr. Crassidis, continuing some of the
same work but also starting on some kind of new things that I've found
passions for that I'm excited about. I do have my own ended fun side projects.
But I also think that there's a lot of benefit from balance to that.
I like rock climbing. It's just kinda to clear my mind and separate myself from all that.
I just absolutely loved my time at UB.
I think that all of the faculty's been really great, not just in terms of classes,
because I do think most of the time wherever you end up going to school
your coursework, your classes, they're going to be very
similar in terms of what you're reading and what you're trying to learn
and understand, but the faculty here is really great at tying in those
concepts of the real world things. Really great about helping you get involved
in research or other kinds of projects that can help. And to bridge that gap from
the theory into reality, which I think is a really important thing for
all engineers and scientists. So I think that that has been one of my favorite
undergrad experiences here, is just all of the opportunities to really get involved
and apply that knowledge to things.
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[Leah Nolan, Humanitarian Award] My name is Leah Nolan. I'm a junior in aerospace mechanical
engineering and I won the Humanitarian Award. Outside of classes I'm involved in
the Nanosat program, a program manager there. I've been involved with Society of Women
Engineers, Women in Science and Engineering, the Students for Exploration
Development of Space, and I've also helped out with the dean's office and
I do the Science is Elementary program. I was referred to a summer camp that actually
took place at UB my junior year of high school. So I figured why not, came on and I had
time of my life here and we worked in a team and built Styrofoam drones
and after that I figured I think this is what I want to do.
So then I came onto UB with just mechanical because I wasn't sure what I wanted to
do with it yet. I joined Nanosat Lab and realized that aerospace really is my place,
and so I then changed to a double major.
So when I first came into school
I thought of engineers as just people who are like inventors and people who
just build things and, alright, so that was something we could start with.
But now looking forward I see engineers as not necessarily inventors but more
like problem solvers. What it's about is training their minds to think in a
different way that you can solve these really tough problems that no one else
wants to solve. I grew up in a family that was very dedicated to community
service, granted my mom was always involved like the PTO and things like
that and she helped run my Girl Scout troop so she was very involved, and my father
was also a volunteer fireman but the legacy began with my grandfather in the 1970s and
since now my uncles, my dad, and my cousins and now I and my sister are both firemen
or firefighters, rather. It was just something that we grew up with. I grew up
in a family that was dedicated to service and it just made sense to
want to help others. So it's about, you know, solving this problem. Someone else needs a
little bit help and so I kind of find that as my duty as an engineer in life.
[Leah] When I first came into engineering I actually, one of the things that inspired
me into it was the firefighting. There's a lot of different tools and mechanisms
like the jaws of life that are like mechanically based.
I thought like oh, it'd be super cool to go into that. Lo and behold, it's a
much smaller industry than I thought. So I'm not too sure about that anymore but
even so I plan on going into industry working probably more in the space and
defense programs, and then outside of work I still do plan on doing things like outreach.
[Leah] Problems our endless in the world. We're never gonna run out of them,
but I think, simply put, everyone has their little bit of I want to change
the world. For me, humanitarian outreach, that's about I guess helping
to inspire and enable that spark in somebody and I think that's really
what engineering is all about.
[Maura Sutherland, Young Professionals Award] I am Maura Sutherland and I won the Young Professionals Award.
Between freshman and sophomore year I got to work at SpaceX, which was really cool.
I did a fall internship with them and then in the summer, between my junior and
senior year, I worked at NASA and then again between my senior year and my
super senior year. It really started with my dad. He has always been like big
science geek and everything. He actually wrote a science fiction book when he
was younger. And so when I was little, we would watch all sorts of like cheesy
science fiction movies. I really liked the aspects of working with my hands and I
was like oh, if this is engineering, cool. I'm into it. What I've learned so far from my
internships that I don't like being behind a computer all day every day.
Having to program for 40 hours a week was just not...not what I wanted to do.
So I would really love to find a job that balanced kind of the computer aspect,
whether its programming or CAD, with hands-on stuff and more
interpersonal stuff. You know, people sort of things. But I would also enjoy doing
management. I think I've had a little bit of management experience with Nanosat
Lab and I've enjoyed that. I like the sort of personal people aspects of it,
and since I've become the president of College Democrats I've also enjoyed
learning more about politics, and I think I would be interested in some sort of a
career where I got to help with legislation in a town or a county level.
I like the idea of being able to really impact an area and create
change, tangible change, which I think is best realized at a county or local level.
In our current day and age (I don't know how well this will age with time),
but there's a lot of division in our country.
I would just say be open to new ideas
and be willing to step outside your comfort zone.
It will change your life and lives of people around you if you consciously try to
have an open mind.
People coming to the table to solve their problems can only help everybody
in this world, so...be nice to each other.
[Jessica Evans, Distinguished Leadership Award] My name is Jessica Evans and I'm the recipient of the Distinguished Leadership Award.
I received this award due to my work on campus as a leader, especially with my involvement in AIAA,
which is the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
I started out my sophomore year as just a member of the club,
and got really interested in the Design Build Fly project team and kind of transitioned
from being a part of that team to pursuing other leadership roles within the club,
and eventually that led to me being elected president at the start of
my junior year. So I've been a second year president now of the organization.
I did not think I would be in this position that I am right now when I came
in as a freshman. As a freshman I was kind of scared, shy, really intimidated to
get involved in things, and be able to lead an organization, talk to individuals
from all over the country, talk to large groups of two hundred, five hundred thousand people.
I've really grown into this position and I definitely, as a freshman,
would not look and recognize myself at all. I definitely think that UB has
helped me with my professionalism as well as giving me the ability to think
professionally and think critically about certain situations. You kind of
have a different mindset going into engineering than when you come out.
Engineers definitely have a different thought pattern so it's really given me
that ability to critically think about situations, not just engineering, but in life as well.
[Jessica] So outside school, it really isn't engineering related,
but I'm a volunteer at The Teacher's Desk, which is a not-for-profit in Buffalo.
I've been a volunteer there for four and a half years now
and they give free school supplies to teachers all throughout
Western New York. My dad's a teacher so it hit close to
home and now, because I am an engineer, they kind of use that experience that I have
to kind of work out logistics or any sort of mechanical issues that they have,
any sort of computer issues. So they try to use my qualities that I have as
an engineer to help them with their not-for-profit.
[Jessica] I just think it's really important for students and individuals to get involved in leadership positions.
It might be scary at first. Like I said, I was extremely shy coming in as a freshman,
but now I have no qualms about going up and talking to people
and striking up conversations. It really has helped me grow as a person and it's an
experience and, as I am right now, would not have happened without assuming this
leadership position that I kind of was unsure of at the time. As a sophomore you
don't think I'm gonna be president and leave this organization and take people
to international conferences and competitions and all of that. So it was a
little bit scary but now looking back I don't regret any choices that I made in
terms of my leadership roles here on campus.
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[Ian Desjardin, Chair's Award] My name is Ian Desjardin. I'm a junior in aerospace engineering
and a lot of the stuff I've done in undergrad I would throw into a couple of
I guess different bins. So I've done a lot of research.
I currently work in the University at Buffalo Nanosatellite Laboratory as
the chief systems engineer. I've done that for two years now. I've also done
an NSF-funded research project at Texas A&M University where I worked on supercomputing
plasma simulations of plasma flow and ball thrusters, and instabilities and
numerical being and things like that those. Then also at UB I've worked in
Dr. Minghui Zheng's lab on robotics and largely just a lot of image processing.
The underlying theme under all this stuff is that I like space. I like space
exploration. That's the type of stuff I want to go work on. Real engineering is not like in
the movies where you're like I'm gonna do it and then you know the music starts
playing and you go on the white board and then two days later it's made.
Even if it's not as cinematic as you think it is, it's still real and it's
moments that you realize that what you're doing is it's real and there's
potentially some consequence there. Those are the really cool moments.
That's why I...I've had the chance to talk to a lot of students who have done very well for themselves,
and I think a lot of the things I've done to make myself successful I've picked up from them.
I'm not a very creative person. I'm an engineer. So I just copy from the best.
I think it's important to have a lot of hands-on experience because that's how you learn,
and it's not hands on, just hands on with a machine or hands on building something.
Hands on can be hands-on equations. It can be hands-on programming. because it could depends on
making the program I do honestly want to work further in space exploration and
now is a really exciting time to be alive and work on that.
There's the obvious ones through SpaceX, you know, with the reusable rockets,
there's NASA with all the renewed missions to go to the moon. There's a bunch
of start-ups that, you know, 20 years ago you wouldn't think of it's gonna be a space
start-up that makes money but now it's like no, there's actually been very
commercially successful space start-ups that fly fleets of satellites, that build
extension technology. My plan is I'm gonna do my best after graduation, go try
to get a PhD in something that I think is really
interesting, that I think is going to help with that future. Then afterward I'm
gonna take wherever I think I'm gonna fit in best that whole landscape and do what
I can, you know, to make men on the moon, men on Mars and men in space stations,
people in all these places, possible and so that's how I see the future.
Zimmer Scholarship Award Winners
Steven Herrera
Ramzy Abu-Ramadan
Sarah Kramer
Danielle Johnson
Cameron Smith
Jingye Tan
Philip Piendel
Gabriel Surina
Jonathan Bessete, David Cummiskey, Johnathon Coleman, Binbin Chen
Nick Di Giugno, Video Producer
University at Buffalo, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Applied Sciences and Engineering