April ’26 ASPIRE Student Section
Welcome to our ASPIRE Student & Faculty Highlights!
In this section we share upcoming events, celebrate your successes, and highlight your research and hard work. Check out our ASPIRE student, faculty, and staff members’ most recent accomplishments!
Perfect Pitch Winner:
In case you missed it, we’d like to congratulate our Perfect Pitch winner & runner-ups. Congratulations to our 2026 ASPIRE Center-Wide Perfect Pitch Winner Raquel Sarabia Soto!
We’d also like to thank runner-ups Ali Tasavvori from the University of Utah and Qihan Zhong from the University of Auckland for their participation in the competition, as well as the seven judges of the competition.
Student Highlights:
In addition to winning the ASPIRE Perfect Pitch Competition, Raquel was also the APEC2026 Best Presentation Award for Session “T24 – Wireless Energy Systems – High Frequency” with her presentation entitled “A High-Power Compact Capacitive WPT System for EV Charging.”
Keep up the great work!
Shoutout to our University of Auckland ASPIRE Student Association President Qihan Zhong, who was announced as a 2026 ENZ Transportation Group Tertiary Study Awardee at the Engineering NZ Transportation Group Conference for her Ph.D. research on Inductive Power Transfer Charging Within Roadway Pavements.
This conference, with over 360 attendees, was held in Wellington, New Zealand, on March 11th. Qihan is a MBIE IPT Project funded Ph.D. student in the Transport Materials Team at the UoA.
We’d also like to recognize the 6 UPEL group graduate students who presented 8 different papers at the 41st IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC) in San Antonio, TX, and 1 paper at the 18th Annual IEEE Green Technologies (GreenTech) Conference in Boulder, CO.
Dakota Goodrich and Shubhangi Gurudiwan received the Best Presentation Paper Award at APEC, and Abdullah Al Mehadi received the Best Presentation Paper Award at GreenTech.
Faculty Highlights
Congratulations to Utah State University Associate Professor Mario Harper for his recognition as the Department of Engineering Researcher of the Year.
We’re proud of your continual contributions to the research field!
The Utah State University Civil and Environmental Engineering Department recognized Srishti Banerji for her research and mentoring expertise. Srishti received the CEE Undergraduate Research Mentor Award.
Congratulations Srishti!
Upcoming Events
The Utah State University 2026 Spring Student Research Symposium will be held April 7-8 from 10:30-4:30 at the Merrill-Cazier Library. Several ASPIRE students will be presenting their research, including:
- Mahmoud Ali
- James Blake
- Cameron Hill
- Bridger Porter
View the full schedule here. We wish our student researchers the best of luck at their presentations!