Graduate Student of the Month

A decrease in water resources and change in the environmental conditions are affecting cotton production in the high plains of Kansas. Koudahe’s research aims to assess cotton growth, actual evapotranspiration and water-use efficiency while developing local crop coefficients under different irrigation technologies, rainfed conditions and plant densities. Data was collected using unmanned aircraft systems, leaf area indices, porometers and neutron probes, among others. His research results will help to identify the best irrigation technology and optimum plant density for effective cotton production in the high plains of Kansas. Koudahe is from Togo and his hobbies include listening to music, playing soccer and community service. Burritos are his favorite food, and he plans on visiting all the continents. Aleksey Sheshukov is his advisor.

Randig is studying the application of fluorescence spectroscopy to predict harmful algal blooms. She conducted intensive monitoring of a bloom event at the Milford Gathering Pond in Geary County, Kansas, and measured various physical and chemical parameters including nitrogen and phosphorus, two of the primary nutrients contributing to bloom events. The results of sampling showed changes in fluorescence spectroscopy preceded changes in chemical and physical parameters and indicate fluorescence spectroscopy is a proactive and realistic algal monitoring tool. Randig comes to K-State from Los Alamitos, California, and hopes to scuba dive in the Great Barrier Reef. She enjoys hiking and cooking with her favorite food being cioppino. Prathap Parameswaran is her advisor.

The focus of Margapuri’s research is on the use of artificial intelligence and image processing to contribute to High-throughput Phenotyping (HTP) in agriculture. He is from Vijayawada, India, and likes to build toy robots, enjoys seafood, especially shrimp, and has done a solo sky dive in Abilene, Kansas. Topping his bucket list is watching an F-1 race live. Margapuri’s advisor is Mitchell Neilsen.

Sweet’s research involves investigating several different methods of improving BCI classification accuracy in emotion and P300 speller tasks. Recently, he has been investigating word priming, transfer learning and latency effects on the classification accuracies in these tasks. His hometown is Webb City, Missouri, and he enjoys watching The Bachelor and playing pool. Sweet’s favorite food is chocolate chip pancakes. Running a beer mile tops his bucket list. David Thompson is Sweet’s advisor.

Phosphate is an essential component for several physiological growth and development factors in humans and plants. It is one of the most important macronutrients taken up by plants from the soil. As such, knowing the complex chemistries of phosphate within the soil is foundational to understanding its role in the development of precision sensors that can potentially mitigate environmental pollution. The goal of Nagaraja’s research is twofold. First, devote time in scalable manufacturing of “wonder material” graphene and understand its physics of electron transport in the environment. Second, additively manufacture sensors for soil phosphates that may one day be used for in-field phosphate sensing by farmers. Nagaraja is from Malaysia, enjoys baking and hopes to witness the Northern Lights. Indian, Chinese and Thai cuisine are her favorite foods. Nagaraja’s advisor is Suprem Das.

Liu comes to Manhattan from China to research Peridynamics (PD), based on nonlocal interactions, which is better suited for failure analysis of structures because it employs spatial integrals of displacements rather than derivatives in its formulation. Compared with the finite element method (FEM), which is efficient for solving continuum problems, PD is computationally expensive. His dissertation research focuses on developing PD theory and its coupling with FEM to take advantage of these two methods. Spicy Chinese food is his favorite food and he enjoys soccer. Currently topping Liu’s bucket list is to find a good research fellow position. Lui’s advisor is Jack Xin.