Four engineering grad students receive Vanier Scholarships

Four UBC Engineering doctoral students — Alaa Abdelaal, Fuhar Dixit, Daniel Holanda Noronha and Ehsanur Rahman — have received Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships (Vanier CGS).

Under the Vanier CGS program, Abdelaal, Dixit, Noronha and Rahman will receive $50,000 per year for three years to support their research in the areas of robotics, environmental engineering, computer hardware and electron devices, respectively.

Launched in 2008, the program aims “to strengthen Canada's ability to attract and retain world-class doctoral students and establish Canada as a global centre of excellence in research and higher learning.” Recipients are selected based on their academic performance, research potential and leadership ability.

The APSC-affiliated projects are:

Alaa Abdelaal (Electrical and Computer Engineering) – “A multi-modal training by demonstration framework for robot-assisted surgery”

Fuhar Dixit (Chemical and Biological Engineering) – “Preparing for the future of water: Increasing resilience to drinking water scarcity through optimized wastewater reuse strategies”

Daniel Holanda Noronha (Electrical and Computer Engineering) – “Rethinking machine learning algorithms and CAD tools to rapidly create efficient FPGA implementations”

Ehsanur Rahman (Electrical and Computer Engineering) – “Thermionic Emission from Carbon Nanotube Forest: A Novel Approach to Generation of Solar Electricity”

This year, 167 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships were awarded to doctoral students across Canada. The scholarships were announced last week by the Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, at Queen’s University.

Read the list of all Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship recipients at UBC.