Achievement

Clementina Russo, a trainee in our second cohort successfully defended her PhD this spring. It was an unusual story and success in the extent of the cross disciplinary interaction that it generated. Her home department was physics, her major advisor was an oceanographer, and her remaining committee members included faculty one each from physics, mechanical engineering, electric engineering and spatial information science and engineering. Her research involved a study of particle aggregation effects and response of two sensor types: optical and acoustic. Her research generated new faculty interactions across disciplines as it identified some common interests among committee members that they were not previously aware of. At her defense, the committee member from mechanical engineering commented how many new interesting questions were raised by the research that he would love to collaborate on.