×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×

Alumni

Alumni
×

Search

×

AFIT PhD student wins best student poster

Posted Monday, November 15, 2021

 

 
First Lieutenant Ashwin Rao, a nuclear engineering doctoral student at the Air Force Institute of Technology received the best student poster award from the Society for Applied Spectroscopy at the 2021 Scientific Exchange conference in Providence, RI in September. (Contributed Photo)

 

First Lieutenant Ashwin Rao received the best student poster award from the Society for Applied Spectroscopy at the 2021 Scientific Exchange conference in Providence, RI. SciX is an international conference for analytical chemistry and spectroscopy researchers organized by the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies.
 
Rao is a nuclear engineering doctoral student within the Air Force Institute of Technology’s Graduate School of Engineering and Management. The award winning poster titled “Development of tree-based machine learning methods for quantification of gallium in a Pu surrogate matrix via LIBS" is based on Rao’s dissertation research. 
 
The award is given to the best student poster conveying the most outstanding spectroscopic research at the conference, based on feedback from multiple judges in industry and academia. Student awardees receive a free one year SAS membership and a plaque highlighting their achievement.
 
Adedeji Badiru, PhD, dean of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management congratulated Rao on winning this competitive award. “This is another cogent testament to the technical quality of the work being done at AFIT. We enmesh teaching with research and the results are phenomenal. When we do great work, our external constituents notice. We are, indeed, the MIT of the Midwest,” said Badiru.
 
The poster presented results of tree-based machine learning models applied for the processing of complex atomic emission spectra. His research clearly showed the advantages of implementing tree-based regression methods for spectroscopic analysis, demonstrating the potential to yield significantly more sensitive, precise and robust predictive models than the typically used multivariate methods.
"I was honored to represent AFIT at SciX and receive this award for my research,” said Rao. “I would like to thank my committee members; Dr. Anil Patnaik from AFIT’s engineering physics department, Dr. John Auxier from Los Alamos National Lab, LTC Michael Shattan from the National Nuclear Security Administration, and Maj Phillip Jenkins from the operational sciences department for their support and guidance in shaping my research and enabling my success."

 

Rao, who earned his master’s degree in nuclear engineering from AFIT in 2020, is focusing his PhD research on applications of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) for analysis of lanthanide and actinide metals as well as applications of machine learning algorithms for chemometric analysis of LIBS spectra.

 

More news...

Return to the top of the page

Air Force Institute of Technology
2950 Hobson Way
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH 45433-7765
Commercial: 937-255-6565 | DSN: 785-6565