News: 2014, June 5th

Four honored with Distinguished Dissertation Awards

Four recent Auburn University graduates have been selected as winners of the Graduate School’s 2013-14 Distinguished Dissertation Awards.

Award winners are Yingsong Huang, Kailash Jajam and Hema Ramsurn in the Mathematics/Physical Sciences/Engineering category and Mallory Lucier-Greer in the Social Sciences category. Huang and Lucier-Greer will go on to compete for the Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Awards.

The Distinguished Dissertation Awards recognize the scholarship of doctoral students whose dissertations make an unusually significant contribution to their respective disciplines. Auburn’s colleges and schools nominate students for the awards, and an award committee composed of graduate faculty selects the award winners.

This year’s winning dissertations are:

• “Energy-Ef?cient Designs in Cyber-Physical Systems with a Control and Optimization Approach” by Yingsong Huang. His dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Shiwen Mao (chair), Prathima Agrawal, Jitendra K. Tugnait and Tin-Yau Tam. Huang graduated in May 2013 with a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering and is now a member of the technical staff at NetApp, a company that develops data storage systems and software.
• “Fracture Behavior of Particulate Polymer Composites (PPCs) and Interpenetrating Polymer Networks (IPNs): Study of Filler Size, Filler Stiffness and Loading Rate Effects” by Kailash Jajam. His dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Hareesh V. Tippur (chair), Jeffrey C. Suhling, Barton C. Prorok and Maria L. Auad. Jajam graduated in August 2013 with a doctorate in mechanical engineering and is now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• “Gasification, Liquefaction and Deoxy-Liquefaction of Switchgrass using Sub- and Supercritical Water” by Hema Ramsurn. Her dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Ram B. Gupta (chair), Yoon Y. Lee, Steve R. Duke and Oladiran Fasina. Ramsurn graduated in August 2013 with a doctorate in Chemical Engineering and has accepted a faculty position in the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Tulsa.
• “Gender role attitudes: An examination of within-individual malleability and the value of dyadic congruence” by Mallory Lucier-Greer. Her dissertation committee consisted of Auburn faculty members Francesca Adler-Baeder (chair), Jennifer Kerpelman, Joe Pittman and Amy Rauer. She graduated in August 2012 with a doctorate in human development and family studies and is now an assistant professor at Florida State University.

Award winners receive an honorarium of $500 and a certificate.

The two categories for the Distinguished Dissertation Awards rotate each year. The Graduate School will solicit nominations in the fall for the 2014-15 categories: Biological/Life Sciences and Humanities/Fine Arts.