Undergraduate student Brandon Tucker won an Outstanding Senior Award for Scholarly Achievement, which recognizes exceptional academic performance including participation in undergraduate research. Brandon was among four outstanding seniors recognized by our department.
[H]he continued undergraduate research as part of the Coastal and Computational Hydraulics Team with Associate Professor Casey Dietrich and graduate student Tomás [Cuevas] López. The project was related to predictions of coastal flooding due to hurricanes.
“I helped run more than 1 million CPU hours of hurricane models to train our machine-learning model called Concorde, which can predict storm-driven flooding in seconds,” Tucker explained. “I also created detailed Python examples for Kalpana, an intermediary model used by researchers across the country.”
“This was a lot of work,” Dietrich emphasized. “Each hurricane simulation can take several hours on a parallel computing cluster and generate gigabytes of data, and so it took about two months to complete the simulations. It would have taken much longer without Brandon’s help and creativity. He wrote scripts to automate the process to submit, monitor, and archive the simulations, and he contributed to a post-processing visualization script. His documentation and examples are now shared widely with all users of the software. Brandon is strong at the technical skills of computing and programming, but he also sees the larger picture and looks for ways to contribute.”
After graduation, Brandon will pursue a Master of Civil Engineering at CCEE with a focus on transportation systems, while also completing a Graduate Certification in City Design from the College of Design.
Congratulations to Brandon!
M.S. student Jessica Gorski was recognized as the Masters Scholar of the Year for Research by the NCSU College of Engineering (CoE). Students were nominated by departments within the CoE, and Jessica was selected for this award to recognize outstanding scholarly achievement and dedication to the NC State community and beyond. The award includes a cash stipend.
Ph.D. student Jenero Knowles was selected as a Global Change Research Fellow by the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. Jenero will participate in the 2023-2024 cohort and receive training and collaborate with students from across disciplines in climate science.
M.S. student Tomás Cuevas López was awarded a fellowship from the Chilean National Research and Development Agency. The Beca de Magister en el Extranjero supports Chilean students pursuing master’s degrees abroad. Awarded students are requested to eventually return to Chile to apply the new knowledge to contribute to the scientific, academic, economic, social, and cultural development of the country. Out of the 605 students that applied for the fellowship, 128 were selected. Tomás is one of only two Chilean students studying in the U.S. to receive the fellowship during this cycle.
Ph.D. student Jenero Knowles was awarded the Witherspoon Graduate Fellowship from NC State’s Graduate School. The competitive one-year award is given to rising second-year graduate students who support Black communities at NC State and beyond, and selections were made by representatives from the Black Alumni Society and Graduate School. The award is named in honor of Dr. Augustus M. Witherspoon, who was the second Black graduate student to receive a doctorate from NC State and the first Black professor at the university.