January 2022 Statler Circuit: Department Digest and Awards

The Statler Circuit is a monthly digest of news from Statler College departments and organizations that showcases the continued successes and accomplishments of our faculty, staff and students.

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

Professor Xin Li, Chuanbo Hu, Minglei Yin, and Bin Liu received the Best Applied Paper Runner Up Award at the Conference on Information and Knowledge Management for their research paper, “Detection of Illicit Drug Trafficking Events on Instagram: A Deep Multimodal Multilabel Learning Approach,” which has been published in the Proceedings of the 30th ACM International Conference on Information & Knowledge Management. The work has been supported by the National Institute of Justice. The researchers partnered with Associate Professor Yanfang Ye at University of Notre Dame. 

FUNDAMENTALS OF ENGINEERING

Lizzie Santiago, teaching professor and academic adviser in the Fundamentals of Engineering Program, has been named Chapter Advisor of the Year by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) through their Technical Achievement and Recognition award program. To be nominated for the award, the nominee must have a proven record of commitment and support to SHPE’s mission and vision, along with a diligent support for the success and development of their chapter and its members. Santiago has served as the academic adviser for the WVU SHPE chapter since 2013. 

MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Kristyn Johnson, mechanical and aerospace engineering PhD student, received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Pressure Gain Combustion’s Best Paper Award at the SciTech conference in San Diego. The paper titled, “Individual Wave Detection and Tracking within a Rotating Detonation Engine through Computer Vision Object Detection applied to High-Speed Images,” was co-authored by Associate Professor Andrew Nix and graduate student Zach Tallman. 

STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS

Leidos, an American defense, aviation, information technology and biomedical research company headquartered in Reston, Virginia, has donated $10,000 to the Statler College chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Ally Simon, industrial engineering student and president of SWE, said the donation will allow members to broaden their opportunities for professional and personal development. Additionally, it will impact students in the local community by allowing the chapter to expand the variety of activities provided at outreach events thanks to increased resources. 

---