Five doctoral students accepted into future faculty training program

Some doctoral students anticipate taking a research position with a company or other institution when they finish their degree. Others have the goal to join the faculty at a university.  In that role, they are often expected to teach as well as to conduct research. But the skills and preparation needed to be successful in a research setting are not the same set of skills needed to be successful in a classroom. The Mavis Memorial Fund Scholarship for Future Faculty Fellows, was created to help develop those skills. Fellows participate in the MF3 Academy, which is a unique program designed to prepare the next generation of engineering professors.

This year, five doctoral students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering have been awarded Mavis Future Faculty Fellowships.

Lee Alacoque works with Associate Professor Kai James. His research is on the automatic generation of mechanism and machine designs using novel topology optimization algorithms

Jean-Baptiste Bouvier’s adviser is Assistant Professor Melkior Ornik. His research is in verification and quantification of the resilience of control systems to partial loss of authority over their actuators.

Hamza El-Kebir’s adviser is Assistant Professor Melkior Ornik.  His research deals with safe autonomous control of complex physical systems in uncertain environments, with applications to autonomous robotic surgery.

Sanjeev Kumar works with Associate Professor Marco Panesi. His research includes the modeling of plasma discharges with an aim to study magneto-hydrodynamic behavior of inductively coupled plasma facilities.

Akhil Vijayan’s adviser is Professor Deborah Levin. His research is in numerical modeling of high-speed multiphase gas-particulate flows

The Office of Engineering Graduate, Professional and Online Programs facilitates the MF3 Academy. Alacoque, Bouvier, El-Kebir, Kumar, and Vijayan will participate in a series of workshops, seminars, and activities that cover various aspects of an academic career for a full academic calendar.

The workshops are open for all engineering graduate students to attend. But being a Fellow in the program requires more than just attending the workshops. For example, one of the additional requirements is that Fellows must complete a capstone project, such as developing a grant proposal or job shadowing three or more faculty members at other institutions and writing a paper reflecting on what they learned.

The Mavis Future Faculty Fellows Academy is made possible by the generous bequest of Frederic T. and Edith F. Mavis. Dr. Mavis received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He was a professor of Civil Engineering at several universities and was the Dean of Engineering at the University of Maryland from 1957-67.