COEIT Student Summer Project Awards

The College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) recently announced the recipients of the 2025 COEIT Student Summer Project (CSSP) Awards.

The internal funding opportunity is designed to create new opportunities to explore research opportunities for eligible research projects. Awardees receive up to $5,000 per student to support a summer research project.

Learn more about UMBC’s internal funding opportunities.

UMBC News highlight: COEIT celebrates student summer research

two people discuss poster presentation with U-M-B-C- logo
Dean Jeanne van Briesen talks with computer engineering student Elijah Polyakov at a COEIT summer research poster session. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)

Students from across the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) spent the summer diving into research—embarking on new projects or deepening their focus. The college celebrated their work in August with a poster session and networking lunch. Students showcased their research on diverse topics including how artificial intelligence can help K-12 teachers monitor student engagement; how best to model environmental phenomena like wildfires and cloud patterns; and how the sex hormone estradiol affects the behavior of blood platelets, which play an essential role in healthy blood clotting. Read more about their completed summer projects in UMBC News.

2025 COEIT Student Summer Project Awards

Read more about the COEIT Student Summer Projects (CSSP) Program.

Undergraduate

Student Name: Bharg Barot; Department: Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Roberto Yus; Project Title: IoT Foundation Models via Synthetic Sensor Generation through Behavior‑Driven Digital Twin

Student Name: Emily Piazza; Department: Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Lee Blaney; Project Title: Development of hybrid anion-exchange resins for selective removal of (ultra)short-chain PFAS

Student Name: Julia Chapman; Department: Mechanical Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Ankit Goel; Project Title: Data-Driven Optimization of an Energy Harvester

Student Name: Khoi Nguyen; Department: Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Adam Bargteil; Title: Machine Learning for Near-real-time Validation in a Wildfire Digital Twin

Student Name: Matthew Quintanilla; Department: Chemical, Biochemical & Environmental Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Mark Marten; Project Title: The Impact of Cell Wall Strength on Mycelial Material Mechanical Properties

Master’s

Student Name: Srikar Sistla; Department: Information Systems; Faculty Mentor: Michael Brown; Project Title: Drug-Induced Autoimmunity Prediction Model using Ensemble Machine Learning

Student Name: Trevor Whitfield; Department: Mechanical Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Molly Mollica; Project Title: Platelet Contraction Under Macrofluidic Simulation of Vessel Shear Rates

Doctorate

Student Name: Muhammad Hasan Ferdous; Department: Information Systems; Faculty Mentor: Md. Osman Gani; Project Title: Generalized Decomposition-based Causal Discovery (G-DCD)

Student Name: Pratik Shukla; Department: Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Faculty Mentor: Milton Halem; Project Title: DUNE2: A Physics-Informed Deep Learning Model for High-Resolution, Long-Lead ENSO Forecasting

Student Name: Zahid Hassan Tushar; Department: Information Systems; Faculty Mentor: Sanjay Purushotham; Project Title: Deep-AeroCloud: Deep Learning-Based Retrieval of Aerosol and Cloud Properties from PACE-OCI Observations

10/8/2025

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