Awards

Charlotte’s 49ers Racing team finished second overall among 113 of the world’s best teams at this year’s Formula SAE Internal Combustion competition held May 8-11 at Michigan International Speedway. The result is the best in program history, with the team also earning impressive rankings in multiple events.

Sukumar Kamalasadan, Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Electric Power Engineering, has been selected to receive a grant by NCInnovation. He is one of only eight UNC System faculty to receive this award.

UNC Charlotte’s Astrobotics Team, the 49er Miners, won first place for Presentation and Demonstrations in the NASA Lunabotics Challenge held on May 17 at Kennedy Space Center. The team, which has earned an award in the competition for the past four years, finished 11th overall this year.

The senior year was momentous for Kennedi Briggs and Jean L. Rivera, not only because of their anticipated graduation but for a distinct honor: they were two of only eight students selected by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) as FE Ambassadors for the 2023-2024 academic year.

Riley Felts, a redshirt senior who will graduate with her master’s degree in geoenvironmental engineering, is an All-American pole vaulter who finished as national runner-up at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.

UNC Charlotte’s American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) chapter won 10 awards at the 2024 Carolinas ASCE Student Symposium.

Charlotte’s chapter placed No. 1 in the Concrete Canoe, Steel Bridge and Sustainable Solutions competitions, No. 2 in the Surveying competition and No. 2 overall out of the nine competing universities.

Niner Engineer Abimbola Ogungbire has been named a 2024 Lifesavers Traffic Safety Scholar and recently attended the Lifesavers Conference on Roadway Safety.

Youxing Chen, assistant professor of mechanical engineering with W.S. Lee College of Engineering and the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center, has earned an NSF CAREER Award for his research proposal, “Atomic-level understanding of stability and transition kinetics of 3-dimensional interfaces under irradiation.”

On April 13, the UNC Charlotte 49er Rocketry Team will compete in NASA’s Student Rocket Launch Competition in Huntsville, Alabama, near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. They have placed in the top two places for the past seven years.

Researchers from across UNC Charlotte who lead initiatives with $1 million or more in active external funding were recognized during a reception on Wednesday, March 27. Almost one quarter of the recognized researchers are PI’s from the William States Lee College of Engineering, including Wei Fan who has more than $5 million in active external research grants.