Message from the Coeditors in Chief

Jennifer Mak

Camille Johnson

Greetings!

We are pleased to present the seventh edition of Ingenium: Undergraduate Research at the Swanson School of Engineering, featuring 24 articles from undergraduate students at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering. These students faced unprecedented challenges this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and yet displayed incredible patience, persistence, and creativity throughout the manuscript writing and review process. This year, we have chosen to showcase two featured articles: the Reviewers’ Choice article selected by members of the Graduate Student Review Board (GSRB) and the Editor’s Choice article selected by us. We felt that these articles demonstrated particularly high quality and unique research as well as excellent writing, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

Ingenium provides Swanson School undergraduate students with an introduction to the peer-review process and allows them to experience communicating their research in abstract and manuscript form. All manuscripts submitted to Ingenium were reviewed by Swanson School graduate students who graciously volunteered their time to provide valuable feedback and suggestions to participants to help them improve their writing. We hope that the articles presented in this year’s edition of Ingenium showcase the diversity present in engineering labs at the University of Pittsburgh.

We would like to thank everyone involved in the production of this year’s Ingenium, without whom none of this would have been possible. First, thank you to Associate Dean for Research David Vorp for his vision and continued commitment to this publication. We also are extremely grateful for the support of Jaime Turek, who guided and supported us in this process throughout the year. Thank you to all of the graduate students who served on GSRB and gave their time and expertise to review the submissions of the student authors. Finally, we thank Reiko Becker, Marygrace Reder, and the entire team at the Office of University Communications and Marketing who assisted us in the production and design of Ingenium.

We are honored to have served as coeditors in chief for this year’s edition of Ingenium and are excited to share this publication with the University and the surrounding Pittsburgh community. As always, Swanson School students have demonstrated their ability to think critically, work collaboratively, and effectively communicate their ideas to a broad audience. We hope that as you read through this year’s Ingenium, you are as impressed as we are with these students’ contributions to their respective fields and their evident passion for scientific research.

Jennifer Mak Camille Johnson Coeditor in Chief Coeditor in Chief