Buckeye engineers and architects earn top honors at 2015 Denman Research Forum

College of Engineering students were recognized for their outstanding presentations at this year’s Denman Undergraduate Research Forum, one of the largest events of its kind in the country. More than 600 Ohio State students presented their work March 25 on topics ranging from discovering new medical technologies to exploring the health of military families.

Projects spanned 11 different categories and hundreds of subcategories.

Joseph Gauthier, a chemical engineering major advised by Kurt Koelling, tied for first place in the engineering category, presenting on rheology and settling dynamics of a particle filled aqueous polymer gel for hydraulic fracturing fluid systems. Mechanical engineering student Chao Xu also received first place in the engineering category, with his project to investigate a new approach for harvesting low-grade thermal energy using an electrochemical system. Xu is advised by Joseph Heremans and Anne Co.

Other winners in the engineering category included second-place Peter Worley, mechanical engineering, and Allison Guettler, biomedical engineering. Third-place winners included Sarah Bushman, materials science and engineering; Molly Bennett, mechanical engineering; Katrin Daehn, materials science and engineering and Hannah Zierden, chemical engineering.

Architecture students Enio Dajko, Melody Funkhouser and Corey Phelps placed second in the arts/architecture category with their project on re-imagining entropy.

In other categories, Joseph Panos, biomedical engineering, placed second and Anirudh Tarimala, biomedical engineering, placed third in health professions – clinical, while Randall Hanna, engineering physics, placed third in math/physical sciences.

For a complete list of 2015 Denman Research Forum winners, visit http://undergraduateresearch.osu.edu/awards/denman/2015denmanwinners.ht….