Their project, investigating solutions to the constant exposure to vibration that users often experience, is one of 12 funded in the college this year through the 51ÁÔÆæ Faculty-Industry Partnership Seed Grants (FIPS). Fifteen faculty members and two scientists from the college have earned the largest share of 20 grants awarded across 51ÁÔÆæ. These were awarded by Office of Research.

Designed to facilitate deeper research collaboration with industry, the FIPS program helps faculty and industry partners move quickly from idea to application, with amounts ranging between $41,000 and $50,000 each. The grants support multidisciplinary research, early-stage product development, and preparation for larger external funding proposals.

The College of Engineering & Applied Science stands out for its extensive industry collaborations, accelerating industrial innovation and training a highly skilled workforce. These partnerships include leadership roles in three federally supported Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers, focused on water, energy and concrete.

Here’s a look at this year’s awardees and their partners:

Brooke Slavens, professor, and Alyssa Schnorenberg, scientist, both mechanical engineering
Partner: Soul Mobility
“Comparing suspension and non-suspension power-assist technologies for reducing vibration and impact exposure in wheelchair mobility.”

Feng Guo, assistant professor, and Rob Cuzner, professor, electrical engineering
Partner: Eaton
“Development of bidirectional-switch-based parallel SiC/GaN hybrid three-level, T-type active-front end for high-power and ultra-high efficiency, fast-charging stations.”

Qingsu Cheng, assistant professor, biomedical engineering
Partner: Exact Sciences
“Scalable automation for organoid-based cancer research.”

´³³Ü²ÔÂá¾±±ðÌý±·¾±³Ü, professor, industrial & manufacturing engineering
Partner: GE Appliances
“PFAS removal via electrochemical oxidation in water.”

Priyatha Premnath, assistant professor, biomedical engineering, (and Sandeep Gopalakrishna)
Partner: RxOS
“Engineering of selective p21 inhibition with radical scavenging hydrogel matrices: a strategic academic industrial partnership for regenerative wound therapy.”

Nikolai Kouklin, professor, computer science, and Konstantin Sobolev, professor, civil & environmental engineering
Partners: Qcells, Silfab Solar, JincoSolar
“Polycrystalline zinc-phosphate thin films: multispectral, low-cost solar energy photovoltaics for industrial deployment.”

´³¾±²¹²ÔÌý´Ü³ó²¹´Ç, professor, civil & environmental engineering, and Nathan Salowitz, associate professor, mechanical engineering
Partner: Precast Engineering Company
“Nondestructive testing and field monitoring of adhesive anchors in precast concrete connections.”

Rani F El Hajjar, professor, civil & environmental engineering, and Tian Zhao, associate professor, computer science
Partner: Carlisle Construction Materials
“Machine learning and acoustic methods for nondestructive characterization of thermoplastic polyolefin membranes.”

Yin Wang, professor, and Xiaoli Ma, associate professor, both civil & environmental engineering, (and Shangping Xu)
Partner: AO Smith
“Accelerating the development of next-generation membrane/composite water filters through an AI- driven digital twin framework based on pore-scale simulations.”

Konstantin Sobolev, professor, and Jian Zhao, professor, both civil & environmental engineering
Partner: Elastizell Corporation of America
“FireShield: development of an advanced cellular concrete system for wildfire protection.”

Woo-Jin Chang, associate professor, mechanical engineering
Partner: Baker Manufacturing Co.
“Rapid characterization of the portable, minimum viable lead detection device for onsite drinking water quality monitoring.”

Zhen Zeng, assistant professor, computer science, and Joe Hamann, executive director, 51ÁÔÆæ Connected Systems Institute
Partner: Rockwell Automation
“Developing and validating multi-agent-assisted industrial robotics systems.”

Find out more about all internal grant opportunities at 51ÁÔÆæ.

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°Õ³ó±ðÌý is a partnership among UW-Milwaukee, Marquette University, and Northwestern Mutual that aims to make southeastern Wisconsin a national hub for data science technology and talent development.

The awards were given in three different programs: the Paving ROADS Seed Fund Program, which supports research partnerships; the Pioneer Collaborative Curricula Program, which aims to infuse data science into the curricula, and the Student Research Scholars Program. Read below for a list of awardees in each category.

Paving ROADS Seed Fund

Jake Luo, associate professor, health informatics
“EXCEL-ECG: Building Explainable EHR-Enriched AI for Guideline-Grounded ECG Decision Support.”
Collaborators: Dr. Divyanshu Mohananey (Medical College of Wisconsin)

Ayesha Siddika Nipu, teaching faculty, computer science
“LLM-Enhanced First-Aid Support System for Medical Emergency Recognition and Primary Care.”
Collaborators: Susan McRoy, 51ÁÔÆæ professor, computer science, and Praveen Madiraju (Marquette)

Habib Rahman, professor and chair, mechanical engineering
“Physics-Grounded Real-to-Sim-to-Policy Framework for Personalized Assistive Robotics Using Vision-Language-Action Models.”

Christine Cheng, associate professor, computer science, collaborator on a project led by Anne Pycha, 51ÁÔÆæ professor of linguistics
“Linguistics expressions of human-likeness in Large Language Models: An ethical approach.”

Pioneer Collaborative Curricula Program

Nathaniel Stern, professor, art and design/mechanical engineering
“Crafting AI.”
Collaborator: Charlotte Kent (Montclaire State University)

Student Research Scholars Program

Ahmad Momani
Mentor: Mahsa Dabagh, associate professor, biomedical engineering
“AI-Driven Radiomics for Predicting Treatment Response in Breast Cancer Using Dynamic Contrast-Enhancement MR.”

Amirsajjad Taleban
Mentor: Jake Luo, associate professor, health informatics
“Agentic ECG: Clinically Aligned Multi-Agent System for Interpretable 12-Lead ECG Analysis.”

Bhavana Tumakuru Mahesh 
Faculty Mentor: Ayesha Siddika Nipu, teaching faculty, computer science
“Integrating EEG and Psychological Profiling for Neuroadaptive Learning Systems.”

Asif Al Zubayer Swapnil
Mentor: Habib Rahman, professor and chair, mechanical engineering
“Exploring Vision-Language-Action Model Integration for Sensor-Augmented Embodied AI.”

Marko Vucelic 
Mentor: Brooke Slavens, professor, mechanical engineering
“Auto-Classification of Manual Wheelchair Propulsion Stroke Patterns in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury and Dysfunction Using Machine Learning.”

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The WSGC is a member institution of the national network of Space Grant Consortia funded by NASA’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program. It conducts NASA-aligned research and provides aerospace outreach across the state. The WSGC also enables students to participate in NASA internships and industry workforce development experiences.

Salowitz was awarded $10,000 in the Research Infrastructure Program for his project, “Exploring Composite Laminate Design with Generative Artificial Intelligence.”

Also in this year’s awards, undergraduate Harrison Lopez Brito, mechanical engineering, won a $3,000 scholarship.

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Distinguished Graduate Fellowships:

• Omar Alsotary (mechanical engineering)
  Advisor: Ryo Amano
• Md Enamu Haque (mechanical engineering)
  Advisor: Habib Rahman

Distinguished Dissertation Fellowships:

• Nayan Banik (computer science)
  Advisor: Habib Rahman
• Seyed Faridedin Rafie (materials science & engineering)
  Advisor: Nidal Abu-Zahra

Advanced Opportunity Program Fellowships:

• Samuel Broadnax (civil & environmental engineering)
  Advisor: Xiaoli Ma
• Cheikh Kada (mechanical engineering), renewal from 2025-26
  Advisor: Ryo Amano

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Priya Premnath, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, has received the 2026 Shaw Early Career Research Award to study a dual approach to bone cancer treatment and recovery. With $200,000 in seed funding, she will explore how stem cells can be directed to heal bone after surgery without triggering new cancer growth.

The annual award, established by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, supports research in biochemistry, biological sciences, and cancer by early career scientists at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. The award is made possible by the late James D. and Dorothy Shaw, donors to the foundation.

How to stop stems cells from turning cancerous

Stem cells are the body’s shapeshifters. In a healthy environment, they begin as generic cells and mature into specific kinds, such as bone, liver or kidney cells. But in a cancer-promoting environment, the same process might reignite the disease instead.

Premnath has a novel idea to guide stem cells to become committed bone cells instead of new cancer cells.

She will study whether a certain drug designed to kill cancer could also help rebuild bone after removal of tumors. For it to work, stem cells in the location would have to be commissioned to mature into bone cells in a cancer-primed environment.

What is UC2288?

A compound used by researchers to kill cancer cells, UC2288 works by inhibiting a gene known as p21. Premnath suspects the gene causes stem cells to mature differently depending on what environment they are surrounded by.

Even before Premnath became aware of the drug, she and her lab members had already found that inhibiting p21 had an effect on stem cells in healthy tissue. It seemed to help bone fractures heal because the stem cells in the location of injury were being nudged into becoming bone cells.

In searching for a non-invasive treatment for bone fractures, Premnath looked for existing drugs that blocked the gene – and uncovered UC2288.

Potential for patients

Now she wants to see if UC2288 can accomplish both staving off cancer expansion while also fostering healing after bone surgery.

The approach has shown potential.

In lab studies, Premnath found that she didn’t need high, cancer-killing doses of the drug to see an effect on stem cells. At much lower concentrations, UC2288 still changed how the cells behaved – even in environments designed to mimic cancer conditions.

For patients, especially young people with bone cancers like osteosarcoma, the implications could be significant. These cancers often strike near growth plates – areas where bones are actively lengthening during puberty.

New insight into bone regeneration

The project could also verify a new idea about bone regeneration.

Evidence from other recent research suggests that stem cells have a middle stage in the transformation to bone cells. They first become cartilage cells. The cartilage serves as a kind of template that is later replaced by bone.

Premnath hopes to uncover what is happening during this process.

Along with chemical signals, Premnath’s team suspects that mechanical forces also help trigger cartilage cells to become bone cells. That insight has inspired her team to investigate a second question.

“Why not just go straight to using cartilage cells and use our mechanical methods to prompt them into bone cells?” she asked. “This would make it much safer to use stem cells, opening the door for their increased use in cancer treatment.”

It would mark a shift in thinking, from trying to control stem cells that have a high propensity to revert to cancer, to working with more stable, committed cells, she said.

“I’m delighted to be chosen for this award and grateful to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation for its support of research that can lead to life-changing cures,” Premnath said.

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The Research Foundation supports faculty and students in turning their research discoveries into patents and licensing, fostering commercial products, services, or startup companies. Since 2006, foundation support has led to 29 startup companies – 14 of them since 2021. More than 210 patents have been issued through the foundation and 91 are pending.

Annual Report faculty/alumni mentions

• Catalyst Grant awardees: Feng Guo (electrical engineering); Ashwin Narasimhan and Priya Premnath (biomedical engineering); and Habib Rahman (mechanical & biomedical engineering).
• Bridge grant winners: RoboHeal Innovations (Habib Rahman’s lab); Intelligence Composites (Pradeep Rohatgi, materials science & engineering, chief technical officer); and William Perry (’24 BS biomedical engineering).
• Intellectual property: Brian Armstrong, Deyang Qu (mechanical engineering) and Bill Dussault (electrical engineering), provisional patent for “Tool to Monitor Cell Temperature in Battery Packs.”
• New to the 51ÁÔÆæRF Board of Directors: Dennis Webb (’71 BS materials science & engineering), incoming secretary

Members of the college shown in the video

Footage of the following appear in the, along with alum, board member and donor Dennis Webb, who has a speaking part.

• Motakabbir Hossain and Md Mahafuzur Rahaman Khan, graduate students in the Rahman BioRobotics lab
• Qingsu Cheng
• Ashwin Narasimhan and Priya Premnath

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Turning underused space into a permanent collaborative work area for senior design teams required extensive renovation. This is the first time they have all been brought together in one large, interdisciplinary studio space.

The project was entirely funded by private philanthropy, including the Alan D. Kulwicki Legacy Fund and the fund of Paul McNally, Senior Lecturer Emeritus, computer science. Additional support came from donors to the CEAS General Fund.

Guests at the event also included representatives of area industries, including those who have sponsored senior design projects. (View a full gallery of previous senior design projects here.)

A possible “next step”

51ÁÔÆæ’s Community Design Solutions worked with the college to provide illustrations of what a “next step” could look like (below). These images reflect further modernization, collaborative spaces and greater visibility from outside the studio.

Interested in leaning more? If you or your organization would be interested in supporting this project, please contact Jean Opitz at opitz@uwm.edu.

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The Present Music ensemble will perform a live musical score, “Radhe Radh Rites of Holi,” a homage to Igor Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” created by jazz pianist/composer Vijay Iyer. The music was released in 2014 as a soundtrack for director Prashant Bhargava’s experimental documentary film “Radhe Radhe.”

Present Music performs this suite with cinematic episodes from the eight days and nights the in Mathura, India.

Guptasarma, whose talk begins at 6:45 p.m., will discuss the themes of mysticism, spirituality, and music in this Indian tradition. The event aims to exude the breathless energy of an Indian street festival, so guests are encouraged to wear bright colors or Indian attire. Other features of the show are:

• Tilak forehead applications and intricate henna tattoos by live artists
• Traditional Indian beverages and snacks for purchase
• India-themed photo booth 

When , use discount code: 25PMHOLI

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Maache and Said will give personal accounts of their homelands, Algeria and Lebanon, respectively, and discuss the ways that Arab culture connects with the celestial.

Planetarium director Jean Creighton will share her favorite story from the book, One Thousand and One Nights, which was collected over many centuries by various authors and scholars across west and central Asia and north Africa. All this is wrapped around indoor gazing of the night sky from Algeria and Lebanon.

The planetarium is at 1900 E. 51ÁÔÆæ., Physics building, room 139.

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One of the arms the lab built mounts to a wheelchair, allowing the user to safely reach and retrieve objects and perform more daily living tasks without help. The other robotic arm is designed for patients who need hand and arm physical therapy. Rahman aims to commercialize the device for home use so that patients can make progress on regaining their range of motion without traveling to a clinic.

In addition to Rahman, PhD students Md Samiul Haque Sunny (bioinformatics); Md Mahafuzer Rahman Khan (mechanical engineering), and master’s student Motakabbir Hossain (computer science) showed the robots in action.

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