ASME’s Nominees Chosen for the 2016 New Faces of Engineering Program
ASME’s Nominees Chosen for the 2016 New Faces of Engineering Program
DiscoverE has selected six ASME members and student members as finalists in the 2016 New Faces of Engineering program, which annually highlights the important contributions early career engineers and engineering students are making to the profession and to society.
Society members Bryony DuPont, Ph.D., Dylon Rockwell and Yi Zheng, Ph.D., were named as ASME’s nominees in the New Faces of Engineering-Professional category, which recognizes the accomplishments of practicing engineers up to the age of 30. ASME student members Drew Haxton, Nicholas Russell and Jacob Steinmetz were selected as the Society’s nominees in the New Faces-College Edition program, which highlights the achievements of third-, fourth- and fifth-year engineering students.
The finalists from ASME and the other societies participating in this year’s DiscoverE New Faces of Engineering program were announced last week during Engineers Week. The official winners in each category will be announced in the April 8 issue of ASME News.
ASME's first New Faces-Professional nominee, Bryony DuPont, is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Oregon State University. Dr. DuPont conducts research in artificial intelligence and sustainability science, using simulation, optimization, and advanced computation to make sustainable solutions more realistically feasible. She is the co-lead of the ASME Early Career Engineering Committee’s Design and Advanced Manufacturing Market Segment Team and has served as a reviewer, review coordinator and workshop organizer for the Society’s International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC). DuPont received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 2008. She earned a both a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010 and 2013, respectively.
Dylon Rockwell, ASME’s second New Faces-Professional finalist, is an airframe design and integration engineer at the Boeing Company in Ridley, Pa., where he serves as a principal investigator for manufacturing technologies. A Boeing employee since 2011, Dylon was assigned to the company’s V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft program and later went on to perform analysis for Boeing’s Crew Space Transportation (CST-100) Starliner, Space Launch System and Sikorsky Boeing SB>1 Defiant programs to quantify and mitigate assembly risk. A member of ASME since 2013, Dylon is a new member of the Society’s Y14.46 Committee Support Group. He received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2011, and a master’s degree in systems engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2015.
The Society’s third nominee in the professional category, Yi Zheng, is an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island, where he leads the Micro and Nanoscale Energy Laboratory. Dr. Zheng’s research interests include nanoscale thermal transport phenomena, Casimir interactions, thermal and mechanical properties of nanostructured materials, and their applications in green energy conversion and harvesting. He serves as a reviewer for a number of peer-reviewed journals, including the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer and the ASME Journal of Thermal Science and Engineering Applications, and as a reviewer, topic chair, and session chair or co-chair for various conferences including the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and the ASME Micro/Nanoscale Heat & Mass Transfer International Conference. He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in 2009. He received a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Columbia University in 2011 and 2014, respectively.
One of the Society’s three New Faces-College Edition finalists, Drew Haxton, is a second-time nominee in the category. Haxton, who was also a nominee last year, is a student at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, N.H., where he is majoring in both mechanical engineering and aeronautical engineering. A former vice president and chair of his school’s ASME student chapter, Haxton is now serving as president of the chapter. “Participating in ASME events as a freshman helped me blossom into the aspiring engineer I am today,” he said in his application. “Now as a senior and president of the ASME chapter, I make sure to put on a wide variety of events to help students embrace engineering the same way I did.” Haxton is also active in a number of clubs at his school, including the student humanitarian group Kenya Connection and the schools music and outdoor activities clubs.
Nicholas Russell, ASME’s second nominee in the New Faces-College Edition category, is a mechanical engineering major at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tenn. Russell, who currently serves as vice president of the university’s Student Government Association, is involved in a number of student activities at Tennessee Tech. His current posts include student regent on the Tennessee Board of Regents, College of Engineering Student Ambassador, and member of the school’s academic affairs and student affairs councils, among others. A student member of ASME since 2013, described ASME as a “great asset” in his application. “ASME has been an amazing source of support and friends,” he wrote. “Young engineers need the guidance of juniors and seniors in their programs to help them decide what major to choose, what classes to take, and what professors are the best. ASME provided me with all of this, as well as a training ground to learn skills like 3D modeling and simulation which proved to be very valuable in my two jobs.”
ASME’s third College Edition finalist, Jacob Steinmetz, is majoring in mechanical engineering at Iowa State University. Steinmetz is a member of Iowa State’s renewable energy vehicle club and a member of the school’s peer tutoring program, assisting other students on subjects including Statics, Mechanics of Materials, and Introduction to Materials Engineering. Like his two fellow College Edition nominees, Steinmetz also credits his participation as an ASME student member with being beneficial to his college experience and future employment prospects. “Not only have I been able to meet peers in my field, but I have also had the opportunity to network with employers and staff members,” he said in his New Faces application. “Meeting these new students has allowed me to find new study partners, people to gather advice from, and other students that I am able to pass some of my knowledge onto. The networking opportunities helped me meet local employers, and schedule multiple interviews for internship opportunities.”
To learn more about the New Faces of Engineering finalists from each participating organization, visit http://discovere.org/our-programs/awards-and-recognition.
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