Phd Students Sagar Tamang and Luci Baker named 2019 Edward Silberman Fellowship Recipients

Two SAFL PhD students were recently named recipients of the 2019 Edward Silberman Fellowship at a special SAFL seminar on November 19th, 2019. Luci Baker, from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics (AEM), and Sagar Tamang, from the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering (CEGE), were presented the fellowships for their outstanding research at SAFL. The fellowship award is paid for in honor of Edward Silberman by his family and friends to acknowledge his contribution to the lab. 

Luci Baker is advised by Filippo Coletti in AEM. She received her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota. She has been doing research at SAFL since she was an undergraduate in 2014. Her research, titled "Experimental investigation of inertial particles in turbulent shear flows" includes studying the interaction between fluid and inertial particles in turbulent shear flows and to investigate how the particle shape, size, buoyancy, and concentration affect the fluid-particle interaction. She uses experiments to investigate the dynamics of both spherical and non-spherical particles in a turbulent boundary layer and in a natural stream environment. 

Sagar Tamang is advised by Ardeshir Ebtehaj in CEGE. He came to SAFL after studying at Auburn University. Sagar’s current research, titled "Bias Treatment under chaotic dynamics using optimal mass transport," focuses on the development of a novel data assimilation scheme to treat biases using the theory of optimal mass transport. He has tested his newly developed scheme on chaotic dynamics that mimic the complex weather systems. He is currently focusing on minimizing the computational cost of his newly developed data assimilation scheme.

The award ceremony was followed with a presentation by the keynote speaker, Dr. Christine Hrenya from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her presentation was titled, "Attractive couples break up unexpectedly." Read more about her presentation.

For more information about the Silberman award and other SAFL awards, click here.