And the award goes to: Annual banquet recognizes dozens of alumni, faculty, undergrads and grads

Our tight-knit MatSE family celebrated the outstanding achievements of so many alumni, faculty, and undergraduate and graduate students at the departments Spring 2023 Awards Banquet, held April 13 at the Illini Union Ballroom in Urbana, Ill.

Recognizing our top-notch crew were MatSE’s Chris Evans, associate professor; Cecilia Leal, associate professor and Ivan Racheff Faculty Scholar; Laura Nagel, chief advisor of Undergraduate Studies; Nancy Sottos, department head and Swanlund Endowed Chair; and Dallas Trinkle, associate head and Ivan Racheff Professor.

Let’s join in the celebration and highlight our award-winners. Without further ado, the award goes to:

Undergraduate Awards

• Alfred W. Allen Award: Maryam Alramadhan, John Chen, Xiyan Chen, Haoran Liu, Amanda Mittanck, Meghan Oh, Sara Pfeil and Jered Zhang
• MatSE Alumni Board Award: Shivam Tailor
• Russell Bolton Research Development Award: Spencer Biziorek and Gigi Yik
• DOW Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Undergraduate Student Award: Celeste Izaguirre and Tiffany Liu
• M. Laird and Charisann Froberg Award: Katrina Arsky and Kira Martin
• Sheryl Blair Tipton Award: Bailey Wooldridge

Undergraduate Scholarships

• A. I. Andrews Scholars: Christian Papachristodoulou and Jacob Schneiderman
• Paul A. Beck Scholar: Warren Wellington
• Harry J. Beckemeyer Jr. Memorial Scholars: Nate Scriba and Zihao Xu
• Clifton G. Bergeron Scholars: Robbie Nollett, Pinak Tripathi and Jay Yoon
• Louis R. Berner Scholar: Henry Wang
• Gerson B. Bilow Scholars: Daniel Cudzich and Edward Lukhanin
• Bob Bohl Scholars: Shivansh Agarwal, Xiangrui Deng, Niharika Devaraju, Yifei Gong, Kayla Huang, Colin MacLeod, Youfu Qian and Jessica Sun
• Capek Scholar: Mia Mikolajczak
• Earl J. Eckel Scholars: Saleem Awan, Shehzad Bajowala, Ryan Bushell, Zhaofeng Cao, Ethan Chen, Andrew He, Aniket Khanna, Saagar Kolachine, Kaila Kuo, Nick Kwentus, Jay Qiao, Aarav Seth, Colin Shan, Arvin Sharma, Jiya Shekhar, Adi Taire, Yunhang Tao, Yuche Tian, Chun-Chia Tsai, Michael Xu and Lewis Yu
• MatSE Engineering Visionary Scholars: Jac Copeland, Ravyn Edran, Elena Granzeier, Allison Lau, Lucy List, Nicole Poppe and Natalija Velisavljevic
• Arthur L. Friedberg Scholars: Joan Daye, Grant Feldman, Orson Hammond, Xinyu Zhang and Yiran Zhao
• M. Laird and Charisann Froberg Scholars: Andrew Lum and Suhaas Sura
• Phil Geil Scholar: Anthony Hyatt
• Henry E. Grein Jr. Scholar: Devon Vanlaningham
• Kaiser Aluminum Scholars: Mike Costa, Daniel Matatov and Shivam Tailor
• Doris Maroney Krumwiede Scholars: Katrina Arsky, Meera Karthi and Elise Tejeda
• Robert E. and Karen Martin Luetje Scholars: Patrick Carmichael and Jay Kwon
• Kevin Moore Memorial Scholar: Celeste Izaguirre
• G. Ronald and Margaret H. Morris Scholar: Enzo Soltani
• G. Ronald and Margaret H. Morris Opportunity Scholar: Sarah Saeed
• Jim Nelson Scholars: Andrew Chieng, Maxwell Li, Gavin Mechling and Ryan Taur
• Professor Cullen W. Parmelee Scholars: Atharva Atreya, Spencer Biziorek, Jacob Chisholm, Peter Christopherson, Cameron Cote, Scott Dastrup and Hayden Gantt
• Professor Cullen W. Parmelee International Scholar: Akhila Mattapalli
• David A. Payne Scholars: Kira Martin and Raymond Wang
• Frederick A. Petersen Scholar: Aiden Fu
• Norman L. Peterson Memorial Scholars: Jake Nuttall, Lydia Taylor and Emma Udovich
• Larry D. and Carol Rakers Scholars: Alice Gao, Cesar Gaona, Hannah Liu and Mckella Susralski
• Ian and Victoria Robertson Scholars: Solana Chiu, Wei-Chun Hsu and Rya Tsai
• Lucille and Charles Wert Scholars: Ryan Barnicle, Tommy Miller, Regina Raemsch, Jakob Stavehaug and Ryan Yao

Graduate Awards and Fellowships

• Chakrapani Annual Innovation Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis: Guarav Singhal
• Conference Presentation (Travel) Award: Christopher Bean, Kinsey Canova, Joon Su Han and Zhichu Tang
• Ross J. Martin Award: Arghya Patra
• M.S. Travel Award: Salil Paranjape
• Racheff Teaching Fellows: Aravind Baby, Tyler Price, Wenxin Zhang and Ziqi Zhao

Alumni Awards

Distinguished Merit Alumni Award: John Klein. ’89 B.S.

John Klein is the chief procurement officer at Medtronic, where he has been responsible for the centralized global supply management organization that provides spend and supplier management across the company. Prior to joining Medtronic in September 2015, Klein served as the global vice president of procurement and led the Performance Polymers Adhesives division at Avery Dennison Corporation. Klein has also served The Valspar Corporation, now Sherwin Williams, the global leader in paints and coatings holding several functional leadership roles, including managing the supply chain and supply management organizations for several of the business groups. In his last position, Klein led the global implementation of lean six sigma across Valspar.

He earned his bachelor’s in materials science and engineering, then called metallurgy, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He holds a master’s in business administration from Harvard University. Klein, his wife Amy, and their three children reside in Boulder, Colorado. He is active with Community Food Share and various community services. Klein’s favorite activities include skiing, golfing, hiking, biking and his children’s hobbies.

Loyalty Award: Khalid Hattar, ’09 Ph.D.

Khalid Hattar is an associate professor of engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville as well as the director of the Tennessee Ion Beam Materials Lab. He previously served as a staff scientist for 14 years at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hattar specializes in radiation damage effects and in situ electron microscopy in a large range of materials systems that have resulted in more than 180 peer-reviewed journal publications. He has developed a range of in-situ techniques to explore the microstructural and property response of materials to combined extreme conditions. Hatter received his doctorate in materials science and engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2009, and he holds a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Young Alumni Award: Arielle Gross Samuels, ’11 B.S.

Arielle Gross Samuels is the managing director and global head of marketing at Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager. She leads Blackstone's marketing function, inclusive of brand, digital, video, design and events. Prior to joining Blackstone, Samuels worked at Meta, formally known as Facebook, serving as the global head of environmental, social and governance business and was previously the business lead of global business marketing. Samuels has also worked at Deloitte in engineering consulting. She serves on the board of the United Nations Foundation Girl Up, the 92NY CEO Council and is a founding member of Chief. Samuels earned a bachelor’s in materials science and engineering in 2011 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Pig Awards

This student-nominated and -made award acknowledges two outstanding faculty and staff members. This year’s winners include:

• David Cahill, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering
• Marie Charpagne, assistant professor

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Congratulations to the MatSE alumni, faculty and undergraduate and graduate student award-winners. You are truly inspirational