CARD May 2025 Student Poster Winners

CARD May 2025 Student Poster Winners

By Victoria Birk Hill June 3, 2025

Featured left to right are Itamar Harris, Zahra Nazariharavani, Ocean Monjur (honorable mention tie), Alisina Bayati, Saeed Nazari, Hanshen Yu (3rd place tie), Mana Masrouri, Mucheng Li (2nd place tie), Anurag Bhattacharjee (1st place).

We are pleased to announce the winners of CARD’s May 2025 poster competition that was held at CARD’s Industry Advisory Board meeting, May 28-30, 2025 at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL.

• 1st Place: Anurag Bhattacharjee, WPI – “A CFD-Based Numerical Tool to Predict Particle Characteristics in Spray Drying”.
• 2nd Place tie: Mucheng Li, WPI “Optical Fiber Noses for Real-time, In-Line Gas and Aroma Sensing in Drying” and Mana Masrouri, WPI – “Hybrid EHD-Driven Heat Pump for Moderate / High Temperature Drying – A Novel Drying Technology”.
• 3rd Place tie: Hanshen Yu, WPI – “Integrated Optimization of Drying Sequences and Process Parameters in Multi-Technology Smart Dryers” and Alisina Bayati and Saeed Nazari, UIUC – “From Mesh to Meal: Region-Aware Graph Neural Networks for Multi-Physics Drying Simulations & Optimization”.
• Honorable Mention tie: Itamar Harris, WPI – “Heating, Baking, Drying with Laser Technology for Food, Pulp and Paper, and Chemicals Industry Sector”; Ocean Monjur, UIUC – “Drying Process, Endpoint and Product Quality Monitoring Using Optical Sensing and Machine Learning”; and Zahra Nazariharavani, WPI – “Performance Evaluation of Atmospheric Plasma Pretreatments for Enhanced Drying in CARD Smart Dryer”.

With the winning students (featured in the photos below) are: Amir Malvandi, CARD UIUC Site Co-Chair; Patricia Howe, CARD Program Manager; Mark Lippi, Emeritus CARD Program Manager; Stephen Cobbe, Kerry – CARD IAB Co-Chair; Xue Liu, BASF – CARD IAB Chair; Srinivasa Salapaka, CARD UIUC Site Director; Yuxiang (Shawn) Liu, CARD WPI Co-Chair; and Jamal Yagoobi, WPI, CARD Director.

Congratulations to all the CARD students. We are so incredibly proud of their amazing talent.

Anurag Bhattacharjee – 1st place

Mana Masrouri, Mucheng Li – 2nd place tie

Alisina Bayati, Saeed Nazari, Hanshen Yu – 3rd place tie

Itamar Harris, Zahra Nazariharavani, Ocean Monjur – honorable mention tie