2023 Awards

Eyre Associates Award for Outstanding Achievement

The Eyre Associates award recognized an aerospace or mechanical engineering student who has demonstrated outstanding academic excellence throughout their undergraduate academic career. This award honors the Eyre Associates’ contributions over many years to the support and development of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering

Winners:

Angus Turnor (AE)
Julia Lim (ME)

The Tony Maxworthy Award

Professor Tony Maxworthey was a leading light in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering from his arrival in 1967 to his passing in 2013. He was a Distinguished University Professor and recipient of numerous awards in his illustrious life, but he always drew considerable joy and satisfaction from teaching our undergraduate project labs. His research was always characterized by an elegance and incisiveness where any given experiment often proved to be the defining study of its time. This award is therefore given to the student work that most closely exemplifies this combination of experimental and analytical elegance for which “TMax” was famous.

Winners: 

Jonathan Yan
Laura Windler
Ori Shirin
Dev Pokhriyal

Group project: Inclined Inverted Pendulum

The Laufer Prize for Outstanding Achievement

John Laufer was chairman for 19 years. He was an internationally known experimentalist in fluid mechanics and had an illustrious career at Cal Tech, NBS, and JPL in addition to USC. He was also instrumental in developing the Senior Experimental Projects Laboratory course (AME 441). This award was established in his honor to recognize the student(s) with the most outstanding project in the AME 441 course.

Winners:

A.j Torres
Warren (Wei Szu) Su
Jenny Lopez Melchor
Cricket Gorey

Group project: E-INK as a Spacecraft Thermal Control Device

The Bleeker Award for Superb Craftsmanship

Al Bleeker was an enthusiastic, dedicated supporter of undergraduate experimental studies. As a friend, technician, and teacher, Al counseled over two generations of laboratory students. This award for excellence and imagination in the design and construction of experiments during the senior year course is presented as a tribute to Al’s contributions.

Winners: 

Brian Yee
Jessica Vela Guevara
Ramakrishna Senthil
Antonio Esteban
Group: Design of an Undertray for FSAE Car

AME Student Achievement Award for Outstanding Ingenuity and Performance

These awards are given to the students in the AME Senior Projects Laboratory who have shown outstanding ingenuity and performance in the design, construction, and testing of their senior project.

Winners: 

Rao, Anisha
Ramesh, Sahana
Norrell, Ava
Daly, Marc
Group: Shape Memory Alloy Rock Crusher (SMARC) for Interplanetary Mining Applications

Haruko Warren
Eva Prestamo
Alberto Martinez
Sharon Li
Group: Guitar Playing Prosthetic Hand

Joy Uehara
Bryce Heitner, Bryce
Colin Duffy
Benny Cohen
Group: Implementing Vision Systems and Dynamic Control Algorithms for Projectile Catching

Kris Thomas
Paul Matt
Sage Clark
Jacob Castro
Group: Applying Machine Learning To Sound Source Location