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Information sciences and technology doctoral students Sajad Kargar, Ashish Hingle, and Julia Hing-ping Hsu won first, second, and third place awards, respectively, at the college’s Innovation Week 2024 graduate student poster competition. Their projects explored sustainable methods to cool data centers, effective methods to teach engineering ethics, and AI-driven methods to analyze community-based technology.
First Place: Sajad Kargar
Sajad Kargar's project, “Improving Free Cooling Systems for Data Centers Through Simulations, Experiments, and Data Analytics,” focuses on the pressing challenge of cooling data centers, which consume large amounts of energy and have a significant carbon footprint. Kargar aims to design and implement novel cooling solutions that reduce energy consumption while maintaining optimal operating conditions for servers. For his poster project, he proposed leveraging natural convection and external temperature variations to efficiently cool data centers without reliance on powered equipment. Through his research, Kargar envisions a future where data centers operate more sustainably, aligning with broader efforts to reduce energy consumption in the digital infrastructure sector. Kargar is advised by Jeffrey Moran.
Second Place: Ashish Hingle
Ashish Hingle’s project “Using Fictional Role-Plays for Engineering and Computing Ethics Instruction” focused on the innovative use of role-play to teach engineering and computing ethics. Under the guidance of his advisor, Dr. Aditya Johri, the project explored how, through role play, students engage in active discussions about ethical dilemmas in engineering, fostering critical thinking and empathy. The project explores both a quantitative element to understand how role-plays can be better assessed and a qualitative element highlighting what students learned through analysis of the discourse. Hingle's work is part of a broader initiative in the college to revolutionize ethics education in engineering, computing, and technology fields. The work focuses on fictional case studies grounded in reality rather than focusing solely on disaster cases and Hingle advocates for a more nuanced understanding of ethics as an everyday practice. In addition to his Innovation Week award, Ashish Hingle recently won second place in a graduate student research competition at the ACM Special Interest Group for Computer Science Education conference for his work on “Accessing and Democratizing AI for Whom? Student Learning through an Algorithm-Centered Supply Chain Case Study” as an ICICLE National AI Institute Educational Fellow. Hingle is advised by Aditya Johri.
Tied for Third Place: Julia Hsin-Ping Hsu
"How Do Gaming YouTubers’ Collaboration Shape Their Success? Implications for Embeddedness in Streamers’ Collaboration Networks,” explored the interconnected dynamics of collaboration among YouTube creators, specifically focusing on gamers on the platform. Julia Hsin-Ping Hsu and her team created a data collection pipeline using application programming interface (APIs) provided by Google’s YouTube and OpenAI’s GPT-4, analyzing over 4,600 YouTube videos across more than 500 channels. What emerged from analysis was not just a network graph of YouTubers’ collaborations but also insight into the relationship between collaboration patterns and channel success. By employing regression models, Hsu and her team established the significance of metrics like out-degree centrality in influencing subscriber count; in other words, the more a user collaborates with other accounts, the better their subscriber numbers. Hsu’s project offers a glimpse into the intricate interplay of social capital, credibility, and community-building in the digital age. Hsu is advised by Myeong Lee.
Hsu shared third place with Kadmiel Adusei, a doctoral student in civil and infrastructure engineering, who presented, “Alternative Disinfectant for Emergency and Point of Use Disinfection.” Adusei is advised by Kirin Emlet Furst.