Graduate Student of the Month

Radina's research focuses on the impact of artificial lighting and controls on patient outcomes in behavioral health facilities. More than 50% of Americans will be diagnosed with a mental illness during their lifetime. Some may seek hospitalization for their treatments. It has long been theorized that the design of the space can have an impact on healing. Light in particular plays a critical role in the regulation of human neuroendocrine, neurobehavioral and circadian systems. Her research looks specifically at the impact of lighting design for patients with depression, bipolar disorder and bulimia nervosa. Radina is from Manhattan, and enjoys hiking with friends, baking, crocheting and playing with her puppies. Her favorite food is "homemade bread fresh from the oven." Visiting Santorini, Greece, is at the top of her bucket list. Her advisor is Fred Hasler.

Badgujar is from India, and his research interest lies in agricultural robotics. He is developing a fleet of autonomous ground vehicles (AGV) to expand farming to arable land suitable for production except for being too steep for conventional equipment, with a goal to boost food production in the region. Badgujar enjoys cooking, chess and podcast listening and hopes to visit every national park in the U.S. His favorite food is chimichangas. Daniel Flippo is his advisor.

Manavi comes to K-State from Iran. Her research focus area is computational catalysts, and she is currently working on modeling state-of-the-art catalysts using DFT calculations. Kabab is Manavi's favorite food and her hobbies include watching TV, reading and cooking. Traveling the world tops her bucket list. Manavi's advisor is Bin Liu.

Olia is from Iran and his research focus area is soil-structure interaction in energy piles. Geothermal energy is the second-largest renewable energy source on Earth and operates with minimal costs and no greenhouse gas emissions. Energy foundations have been considered the best heat exchangers between buildings and soil layers to provide heating and cooling for buildings with few alterations to the current foundation construction practices. The main limitation in the design, analysis and widespread use and construction of energy foundations is the lack of knowledge to quantitatively account for thermally-induced stresses and deformations. To this end, his research focuses on developing mechanics-based analytical models for calculating thermal and mechanical displacements, stresses and strains in energy piles to enable researchers and practitioners to analyze thermo-mechanical stresses and strains with minimal effort and level of expertise. This research has attracted international attention due to its simplicity and rational base. This model has precited several full-scale and centrifuge tests successfully and could be used as a basis to evaluate computational models to confirm their validity. Olia enjoys books and sci-fi movies. His favorite food is Persian kebab. Traveling the world and steering a hot air balloon top his bucket list. Dunja Peric is his advisor.

Deep learning is Khanal's research focus area and he is interested in the application of deep-learning in extracting actionable information from social-media content. During crisis events, social media has been known to be a go-to platform for people to voice their concern or ask for help. Extracting actionable information from these posts can help aid the response. His research focuses on data collection, annotation and the use of deep-learning approaches to find such information. More recently, he has been looking into multi-modal/multi-task models for addressing the problem. Khanal is from Nepal and enjoys soccer. Momo is his favorite food. His top bucket list item is watching a Chelsea home game at the Stamford Bridge in London. His advisor is Doina Caragea.

Munikoti's research area is in complex networks. He is working on developing a computationally efficient and scalable framework for the resilience evaluation of infrastructure networks, including smart grid. Primarily, it deals with theoretical physics-aware analytical formulations and data-driven graph machine-learning algorithms. The research also encompasses a deep reinforcement learning-based framework for quick estimation of restoration strategies in critical infrastructures after the onset of extreme events. Munikoti is from India, and he collects auto magazines, enjoys mushroom lasagna and hopes to go on a wildlife safari in the Amazon rainforest. Bala Natarajan is Munikoti's advisor.

Virtual reality technology for daily activity testing is Brazil's research area. With an increased number of older adults (65+), we expect to see an increased number of people experiencing functional decline. Having a functional impairment can cause a significant burden on the patient, caregivers and care providers, which would benefit from a better diagnosis tool to identify when one needs assistance. It can increase quality of life and safety of people experiencing functional decline, as well as increase the peace of mind of families of older adults who live independently. Her Ph.D. research evaluates the feasibility of virtual reality (VR) technology to screen for daily life activity impairments in older adults. With VR, tests can be created that replicate real-life activities without the need of an infrastructure to conduct direct observations, making these types of tests cheaper and more accessible. Brazil enjoys cooking, hiking, playing tennis and CrossFit training. Her favorite food is anything sweet, and she would like to participate in a MasterChef or baking show. Brazil is from Brazil, and her advisor is Malgorzata Rys.

Xu is from China, and his research area is in fluid mechanics, particularly reduced-order model and optimal flow control. He enjoys Formula One racing, Gunpla model building and fishing. His favorite food is fried crappie, and a road trip to the west tops Xu's bucket list. His advisor is Mingjun Wei.