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Selections for the fourth class of Future Innovators of America Fellowships have been announced by the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering.  

The eight recipients and the department which selected them are:  

• Maxwell Donelan, mathematics and statistics 
• Tennille Eremas and John Akujobi, both computer science
• Keaton Ranslem, civil engineering
• Connor Matthies and William ��※��DzԲԱ����, both mechanical engineering
• Eli Otten and Gabrielle Robbins, both construction and concrete industry management.

Recipients are awarded $5,000 with $4,500 as a stipend and $500 to cover the cost of lab supplies or travel to disseminate the results of their projects.  

The fellowships were created to provide unique research opportunities for undergraduate students in the college. Any student is eligible to apply as long as they are attending full time and have a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Application deadline was Nov. 5.  

Each student worked with a potential project mentor, who must be a faculty or research staff member, to develop and submit a research plan that entails learning by doing.  

Projects that 2025-26 recipients will focus on are:  

• Matthies, a senior from Hartford, is working with associate professor Gregory Michna on “Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Impinging Jet Arrays with Innovative Geometries.”

While the title is intimidating, the work has many practical opportunities. Matthies explained, “The most common example of an impinging jet in industry is high-velocity air blown onto a hot component to cool it. The textile industry, aerospace industry, electrical component manufacturers and high-performance data centers often make use of impinging jets to achieve rapid and consistent cooling.

“In many cases, arrays of multiple jets are preferred over a single jet to cool a larger area more effectively. However, this leaves hot spots in regions outside the core of the jet. 

“To improve the uniformity of the cooling throughout the surface, researchers generate swirl within the flow. This can be accomplished through many types of inserts and twisted grooves; however, our research focuses on the addition of a twisted tape to the jet nozzle through additive manufacturing techniques.”

• ��※��DzԲԱ����, a junior from Edina, Minnesota, is working with associate professor Saikat Basu on “Experimental Measurements of Liquid Media Penetration within 3D-Printed Anatomical Respiratory Cavities.”

He reports they have run experiments to validate computational data with the context of optimization of nasal sprays and are looking into validation/exploration of simplified anatomical domains. 

• Eremas, a sophomore from Papua New Guinea, worked with associate professor Kwanghee Won on a water monitoring project. She created sensor models that converted raw measurements from multiple sensors (infrared, force and ultrasound sensors) into water-level estimates, along with using an algorithm, Kalman Filter–based data fusion, to improve the accuracy of the resulting readings.

She has completed the process and now is in the process of compiling a project report. 

• Donelan, a junior from Brookings, is working with associate professor Semhar Michael to use algorithms and formulas for various social determinants of health to predict outcomes of a disease. At this point he is looking at end-stage kidney disease but still needs to gain access to the sensitive data.

• Robbins, a junior from Rapid City, is working with assistant professor Phuong Nguyen on “An Empirical Investigation of Construction Operational Issues and Mitigation Strategies.” 

She is to identify and analyze key operational challenges in construction projects — specifically during the transition from preconstruction to operations, subcontractor management and material procurement — all with the intention of developing strategies to streamline processes, reduce costs and improve team morale. 

“I believe this will have a positive impact on the construction process and help create a more cost-effective and productive construction environment,” Robbins said.

• Otten, a junior from North Sioux City, is working with assistant professor Mohammad Teymouri to develop and use a code/artificial intelligence system that can analyze South Dakota Department of Transportation camera images during winter deicing operations to classify the performance of the deicers.

Otten said, “We are currently refining the code to be capable of effectively collecting the images from the SD511 website. We will then move on to training a model to classify deicer performances.”

• Ranslem, a senior from Norfolk, Nebraska, is working with assistant professor Akram Jawdhari on “Carbon-Fiber Reinforced Polymer Rod Panels.” They are using carbon-fiber reinforced polymer rod panels to see the extent of exterior reinforcement increase that can be gained. 

Ranslem explained, “The traditional method of attaching them is to use an epoxy adhesive to connect them to the beams. We are looking to see if a cementitious mortar will be a viable replacement over the less environmentally friendly epoxy that is currently used.

Next steps are testing the rods, pouring the beams and compiling the data.

• Akujobi, a senior in computer science who is originally from Nigeria, is working with assistant professor Chulwoo Pack on “Affordable Multimodal sensor-Based Environmental Risk detector (AMBER).” 

Pack said, “The success of this project will impact multiple stakeholders by giving workers timely alerts about hidden hazards, helping companies reduce accidents and improve productivity at a lower cost, and offering regulators a practical tool to strengthen safety standards.”

He added, “Environmental anomaly detection is critical for identifying unexpected risks in many environments, from construction sites to autonomous systems. However, many solutions rely on high-end sensing devices and large-scale artificial intelligence models, which come at a cost that hinders their practical adoption for individual worker safety.”

The AMBER project, begun in spring 2025, aims to bridge this gap by developing an affordable, scalable and wearable device that detects safety-related environmental risks, specifically obstacles and fast-moving objects in blind spots, in real-time, providing immediate feedback to workers. 

The project’s first semester developed AMBER V1 hardware test bed, a self-contained unit, mounted on a hard hat, with all core components evaluated, wired and unit-tested, confirming the viability of the hardware and foundational software. 

Akujobi now  seeks to advance this test bed into a robust, formally validated prototype by completing advanced algorithm development and conducting comprehensive system-wide testing.