{"id":678,"date":"2026-08-03T14:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T18:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/physics\/vaidalab\/?page_id=678"},"modified":"2026-08-03T14:40:36","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T18:40:36","slug":"awards","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/physics\/vaidalab\/awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Awards and Grants Earned by Students<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Mark Wasuwanich<\/strong>\u00a0received the award for the\u00a0<strong>Most Outstanding Presentation<\/strong>\u00a0at the\u00a0<strong>Dr. Nelson Ying Orange County Science Fair<\/strong>. His presentation highlighted research conducted in the Vaida&#8217;s laboratory on\u00a0<strong>2D nanostructured photocatalytic materials for solar fuel generation<\/strong>\u00a0(February 2018)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Cody Jordan<\/strong>\u00a0recives the UCF-OUR Student Research Grant for the proposal \u201cExploration of Charge Carrier Dynamics of TaS<sub>2<\/sub>\u00a0Nanoflakes on MoS<sub>2<\/sub>\u201d (Dec. 2018)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Trong Nguyen and Nikki Marrow<\/strong>&nbsp;received UCF-OUR Student Research Grant for the proposal \u201cAmmonia Synthesis using Hexagonal Boron Nitride Catalysts with Au and Ag\u201d Nanoparticles (Dec. 2018)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Trong Nguyen<\/strong>\u00a0received a research grant from the UCF-Burnett Research College for the research proposal \u201cMechanicistic Understanding of NH<sub>3\u00a0<\/sub>Synthesis on Novel 2D-Nanostructured Catalysts\u201d, (Dec.\u00a02018)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Cody Jordan<\/strong>&nbsp;earned the second poster prize at 2019 FL-AVS Symposium (2019)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Md Afjal Pathan<\/strong>&nbsp;received the third prize at 2019 AVS Short Course on Surface Science and Nanomaterials (March 10, 2019)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Aakash Gupta<\/strong>\u00a0earns a research grant from UCF-OUR for his project \u201cTracking ultrafast uni- and bi-molecular photoinduced reactions at surfaces with femtosecond extreme ultraviolet laser pulses\u201d (Jul 2019)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Md Afjal Pathan<\/strong> and <strong>Nikki Marrow<\/strong>\u00a0received the grand prize for poster presentation at 2020 FL-AVS Symposium: Nikki Marrow, Md Afjal Khan Pathan, and Mihai E. Vaida, Synthesis and characterization of two dimensional TaS<sub>2<\/sub>\u00a0layers on Cu(111), Florida Chapter American Vacuum Society (March 2020)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Md Afjal Pathan<\/strong>\u00a0received third prize at AVS short course on Catalysis and Catalytic Materials (March 2020)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Aakash Gupta<\/strong>\u00a0received the third place in the Astrochemistry section at the AVS 2020 International Twitter Poster Competition for a poster presentation \u201cAakash Gupta, Md Afjal Khan Pathan, and Mihai E. Vaida, Investigation of Photoinduced Reaction in H2O Ice Layers using Femtosecond Soft X-Ray Lase Pulses,\u00a0(Jul. 2020)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Keith Blackman<\/strong>&nbsp;received the UCF Graduate Studies Summer Mentoring Fellowship (May 2021)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Corine Smith<\/strong>&nbsp;received UCF-OUR Student Research Grant for the proposal \u201c<em>Enhancing the stability and efficiency of catalytic materials consisting of cerium oxide decorated with Pt single-atoms<\/em>\u201d (Dec. 2021)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Corine Smith&nbsp;<\/strong>received the grand prize for poster presentation at 2022 FLAVS Symposium:&nbsp;Corine M. Smith, Sasha N. Berriel, Keith Blackman, Ariel Tarrago, Emily Martinez, Muktar Hussain, Parag Banerrjee, and&nbsp;Mihai E. Vaida,&nbsp;<em>Cerium oxide thin films decorated with Pt clusters: Understanding the effect of cluster size and substrate composition on CO adsorption and oxidation,&nbsp;<\/em>Symposium&nbsp;of the&nbsp;Florida Chapter of American Vacuum Society (Orlando,&nbsp;&nbsp;FL, May 2022)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Corine Smith\u00a0<\/strong>received the\u00a0UCF Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher Award, 2023 (Aug. 2023)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>George Turner&nbsp;<\/strong>received UCF-OUR Student Research Grant for the proposal \u201cUnderstanding the effects of gas-phase pressure on the ultrafast molecular dynamics of surface reaction species\u201d (Sept. 2023)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Eric Segrest<\/strong> and <strong>Alejandro Rodrigues<\/strong> receives the UCF Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher Award, with the proposal \u201cUnderstanding the carbon-carbon bond formation on copper-based catalysts that lead to high-value chemicals (Sept. 2024)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Sebastian Cimino<\/strong> receives the UCF Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher Award, with the proposal \u201cInvestigating and Improving the Thermal Stability of Single Pt Atoms and Clusters on Two-Dimensional Materials and Ultra-Thin Films as part of the Student Research Grant\u201d (Sept. 2025)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Alejandro Rodriguez<\/strong> was honored with the\u00a02025 Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)\u00a0by the UCF Office of Undergraduate Research, to facilitate his research endeavors within Vaida&#8217;s laboratory during the 2025 Summer semester (April 2025).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Keith Blackman<\/strong> received the College of Sciences Dissertation Research Support Award (Feb. 2026)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Eric Segrest<\/strong>\u00a0won the Judges\u2019 Choice Award for his poster\u00a0<em>Concurrently monitoring ultrafast surface and gas-phase dynamics in solid\u2013gas interfacial reactions<\/em>, presented at the 2026 UCF\u00a0Student Scholar Symposium (April 2026)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Awards and Grants Earned by Students<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-678","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - 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