Emma Balevic and Olivia Wilburn Earn Top Spots in PhD Presentation Competition

We are thrilled to announce that two students from our research group, Emma Balevic and Olivia Wilburn, placed 1st and 3rd in a PhD student presentation competition! Earlier this month, CU Boulder’s Mechanical Engineering PhD department hosted the Graduate Engineering Annual Research & Recruitment Symposium (GEARRS). The event invites admitted PhD students to visit the campus and attend faculty meetings, student presentations, and other events that showcase the department’s community and values. In a presentation competition hosted on the second day of the event, 20 current PhD students were invited to present their research to the visiting students. Emma (right) placed 1st and Olivia (left) placed 3rd.

Emma’s presentation focused on her analysis of experiences of engineers who volunteer with humanitarian engineering (HE) organizations. Her work investigated recruitment and retention strategies to encourage active participation and improve outcomes of HE projects. Last year, our research group surveyed over 180 engineers who volunteer on HE projects. Emma has been analyzing the results to understand what has motivated and challenged these engineers throughout their volunteer journeys. This project was sponsored by the IEEE Humanitarian Technology Board.

Olivia’s presentation focused on design for well-being by applying affordance theory, which explains how an artifact's features enable or restrict specific user actions and experiences. This work assessed affordance mechanisms as a potential tool to support design practices for positive well-being outcomes. Using transportation modes as a case study, college students were interviewed to explore how specific affordance mechanisms of technologies can contribute to positive or negative well-being outcomes. Her findings resulted in 233 examples, which showed trends in mechanisms, technologies, and perceived well-being outcomes. This work is being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Christopher Mabey, an assistant professor at Clemson University.