Georgia Institute of Technology Materials Science and Engineering

The second annual MSE Elevator Pitch Competition took place in conjunction with the MSE Industry Day on October 24 in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building. Twelve graduate students participated in the preliminary rounds of the competition. Two panels of four non-scientists judges narrowed the pool down to seven students to participate in the final round. Competing for cash prizes, the students had 90 seconds to present their research without the aid of props. Four judges drawn from industry chose three winners.

Pedro Arias Monje was awarded first place for his presentation “Plastic Fibers, Carbon Nanotubes and Spiderman.” Mohammad Kirmani received second place with his talk titled “Making Human Travel to Mars a Reality: Overcoming Materials Limitation Through Development of Ultra-High Strength and Lightweight Carbon-Nanotube-Based Plastics.” Shuaib Balogun won third place with his pitch “Oil Spills: A thing of the past.”

The other finalists were Eleanor Brightbill, Saad Javaid, Ah-Young Song, and Karla Wagner.

New this year, a People’s Choice Award was included in the competition. Audience members were encouraged to electronically vote for their favorite presentation. The prize this year went to Shuaib Balogun.

The Industry Day also included a poster session, at which 56 graduate students and nine Undergraduate Research Scholars presented posters highlighting the cutting-edge research in which they are involved in MSE.