ME Students Recognized as Distinguished Leaders
ME students have once again been recognized as outstanding leaders. Kiran D'Souza, Danese Joiner and Erin MacDonald have received Distinguished Leadership Awards for 2006. The honor recognizes outstanding leadership through contributions to the CoE and/or the community. The three are continuing their tradition of excellence, having previously received Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation in 2005.
Kiran D'Souza
Kiran D'Souza
Doctoral candidate Kiran D'Souza is carrying on a family tradition, as his three brothers, Vinay, Deepak and Arun, all received their bachelor's degrees at U-M in Mechanical Engineering. His father is also a mechanical engineer.
Among the activities that led to his being recognized with the Distinguished Leadership Award, D'Souza has been an active student leader on the engineering campus since his undergraduate days. After entering graduate school, he served as the ASME Student Advisor and Vice President and Secretary of Affairs for Pi Tau Sigma, the ME honor
society. He is currently serving on the Mechanical Engineering Student Leader Board and the ME Graduate Council, and he continues to be an active member of Epeians, the Engineering Leadership Honor Society. "It felt nice to be honored for the service I have done for the ME department and the College of Engineering" he said.
"I grew up in Troy, Michigan, and I wanted to go into engineering when I started
college. I knew the University of Michigan has one of the best engineering programs," D'Souza said.
This year's honor is the latest for D'Souza. He has previously received the 2003 Mildred and Steele Bailey Prize from the College of Engineering for academic excellence and outstanding leadership and service to the college and community, and the 2002 A.D Moore Award. He also received the 2002 Melvin R. Green Scholarship from ASME International and a 2001 ASME Foundation Scholarship.
D'Souza previously earned a BS and MSE degrees in ME from the University of Michigan. His primary research area is damage detection in nonlinear systems using vibration-based methods.
Danese Joiner
Danese Joiner
Some people can trace the beginning of their life's work to a specific moment. For PhD candidate Danese Joiner, that moment came in what some might call an unlikely spot.
"I knew that mechanical engineering was for me the moment I walked into the machine shop, heard the high-pitched chipping sound of the lathe, smelled residual pieces of plexiglass and aluminum, and observed the pride and determination of the other workers," said Joiner. "When I went there, I forgot about the outside world, and focused on building, creating, and applying my knowledge through power tools and materials. The power and joy I felt sawing and threading is something that still inspires me to succeed and excel within the academic field."
The passion is clearly still there, as evidenced by her most recent honor from the College of Engineering. Prior to being named a Distinguished Student Leader, Joiner received a GEM Research Fellowship and Rackham Engineering Fellowship. She has also been a member of the Mechanical Engineering Honor Society.
Her leadership abilities have been clearly evident in her role as president of the Society of Minority Engineers and Scientists (SMES-G). "When I became president of SMES-G," she said, "the tasks and obstacles that were ahead of us were immense.
"Under my initiation and direction, the newly elected executive board began the process of reconstructing the foundation of the organization by creating and implementing a constitution and bylaws. This process has clearly defined the goals and objectives of SMES-G and established a clearer idea of the roles and responsibilities of the executive board members and general membership."
Joiner's primary research area is in fracture healing and the balance between micro-damage accumulation and bone remodeling. She holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rutgers University and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Erin MacDonald
Erin MacDonald
After working as a product designer for several years, Erin MacDonald returned to school, earning an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2004. Now, as a doctoral candidate, she works at merging engineering, psychology and marketing methodologies to understand the complex design issues behind creating environmentally-friendly products with mass-market appeal.
MacDonald came to the ME because she wanted to study product design from an interdisciplinary approach.
"I wanted to see how different schools and departments approached interdisciplinary design," she said. "After asking a lot of questions, I was most impressed with UM's commitment to interdisciplinary design in research and in the classroom. I was also impressed with the flexibility of the faculty for being open to my initial thesis proposal which was about redesigning the zipper. There were at least three professors that said 'It's not a PhD, but we can make that work with a PhD' This was an early indicator of the general attitude I have found at the school; if you have an idea you are passionate about, people will help you make it happen. I get a lot of wacky ideas, so this is important to me."
A graduate of Brown University, MacDonald's award reflects her many on- and off-campus activities. She has been Director of the Graduate Society of Women Engineers for the past two years, and with current co-director Irina Dolinskaya, she continues to develop and coordinate events for that organization. She has also been a member of the Better Living Using Engineering Lab (BLUElab), the Antilium Design Science Group, and the Graduate Student Advisory Committee, and an Activity Leader for the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program . Among her previous honors have been 1st Place Design Poster and 2nd Place Design Presentation awards at last year's Graduate Student Symposium.
Asked what leadership means to her, MacDonald's answer could serve as the criteria for the award. "Leadership is putting in extra effort to make something you deeply care about happen," she said. "Leaders take action on their concerns. When others see the extra effort a leader makes, they might realize the issue is important to them, too, and worth some extra effort on their part."
