Recent accomplishments by the campus community were earned by Leonardo Bastos, Jesse Casas, Joel Crowther, Yansha Deng, Colton Harper, Massimiliano Pierobon, Saravanan Raju and Richard Sutton. Other achievements include student-led advertising campaigns created for the Uganda nonprofit Child Mother’s Initiative.

Faculty/Staff

• Massimiliano Pierobon, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and Yansha Deng, a visiting graduate student, were among co-authors on a paper that received the 2017 Best Paper award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ Global Communications Conference. The paper, “A Microfluidic Feed Forward Loop Pulse Generator for Molecular Communication” earned the award in the Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications category. Deng, a student at King’s College London, began the research while studying as a visting post-doctorate at Nebraska in 2016. The topic stemmed from her research and an idea Pierobon began developing as a doctoral student. Learn more about the award.

• Saravanan Raju, a research engineer in Computer Science and Engineering, received the 2017 Jane N. Ryland Fellowship from Educause, the largest association of computing and information technology professionals in higher education. The Ryland fellowship program is designed to help build future leaders in computing and information technology. It recognizes an individual’s past achievement, and personal and institutional commitment among other aspects, while fostering professional development. Learn more about the award.

• Richard Sutton, professor of agronomy and horticulture, received an American Society of Landscape Architects Research Honor Award for his “Seeding Green Roofs for Greater Biodiversity and Lower Costs” project. The award was presented at the society’s annual meeting in Los Angeles on Oct. 23. The project examined a suite of materials and techniques to improve and enhance the establishment and use of native grasses on green roofs. Learn more about the award.

Courtesy photo

Richard Sutton (left) receives a research honor during the ASLA meeting on Oct. 23 from Vaughn B. Rinner and Elizabeth Miller.

Students

• Leonardo Bastos and Joel Crowther were selected as International Plant Nutrition Institute Scholar Award recipients for 2017 at the North Central Extension-Industry Soil Fertility Conference Nov. 15 in Des Moines, Iowa. Bastos is an agronomy doctoral student, while Crowther is completing a master’s degree in agronomy. The institute selects outstanding graduate students in the field of plant nutrition for receipt of these awards. Bastos’ research will provide a framework to understand how different crop canopy sensors recommend variable-rate nitrogen and whether or not these sensors can be used interchangeably for nitrogen management in irrigated corn. The goal of Crowther’s research is to explore the feasibility of this integrated approach of combining management zones and sensor-based approaches for nitrogen use efficiency. Learn more about the awards.

• Jesstin Casas, a sophomore political science and classics and religious studies major, was selected to attend the 18th annual Public Policy and Leadership Conference at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. More than 800 applications were received from 220 different institutions. Casas was one of 73 students selected.

• Colton Harper, a junior computer science major, had a paper accepted to the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers’ International Conference on Computer Communications, which is April 15-19 in Honolulu, Hawaii. The paper, “Estimating Information Exchange Performance of Engineered Cell-to-cell Molecular Communications: A Computational Approach,” examines the implementation of molecular communication through synthetic biology. The paper was co-authored by Harper, Massimiliano Pierobon, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, and Maurizio Magarini of Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy.

• In their first semester in college, students in an honors seminar led by Nancy Mitchell, professor of advertising, teamed with Resilient Women, a recognized student organization, to create an advertising campaign for the Uganda nonprofit Child Mother’s Initiative. The nonprofit works to empower teen mothers by creating sustainable opportunities for them and their families. Learn more about the project.

This column is a regular Friday feature of Nebraska Today. Faculty, staff and students can submit their achievements to be considered for this column via email to achievements@unl.edu. For more information, call 402-472-8515