Two NDSU undergraduate students excelled during the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization's NanoPitch Contest, held March 24.
Civil engineering seniors Wesley Kaeter from Ostego, Minnesota, and Malachi “Mac” Graupman from Mankato, Minnesota, received honorable mentions in the prestigious competition. The contest gives participants 100 seconds to explain their research.
Kaeter is a National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenge Scholar at the College of Engineering.
During the competition, Kaeter presented "Multifunctional Graphene Oxide Iron Nanohybrid for Metal (Arsenic and Lead) Remediation," while Graupman’s topic was "Fe-Biochar Nanohydrid for Sustainable Phosphorus Recycling."
“Most of the participants were graduate students and post-docs, and the judges specifically recognized our undergraduate researchers for their remarkable pitches,” said Achitya Bezbaruah, NDSU Gehrts Presidential Professor and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, who is the research adviser for both Kaeter and Graupman. “Typically, SNO gives only three awards, but made an exception this year for Wes and Mac, given the quality of their work and pitch.”
The top finishers were doctoral students from Georgia Tech, Arizona State and City University of New York.
The contest’s mentoring panelists included Wunmi Sadik, of the New Jersey Institute of Technology; Philip Demokritou of the Harvard School of Public Health; Debora Rodrigues from the University of Houston; Kyle Doudrick from the University of Notre Dame; and Andrea Hicks from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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