Student Success

When the students in Lehigh’s Bridge System Design Class received the requirements for their class competition designing a long-span bridge over a major river, they didn’t know they were based on an actual bridge industry design-build proposal.

Nor were they aware that their work would be reviewed by engineers who designed a span—the new Goethals Bridge that connects New York’s Staten Island and Elizabeth, New Jersey—to meet those requirements in real life.

LU Aero, Lehigh’s aerospace engineering club, participated in the 2022 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Design/Build/Fly Flyoff, held April 21-24. The team placed 48th out of the 65 teams that attended the event, hosted by Textron Aviation, in Wichita, Kansas. 

Student speaker Praveen Sreeramagiri ’22 PhD (mechanical engineering): "Curiosity and encouragement are crucial for science and can lead to unimaginable and breathtaking discoveries.”

Materials science and engineering PhD student and recent bioengineering graduate Andrew Kitson ’21 has been recognized by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). The prestigious fellowships are awarded annually to promising students pursuing research-based advanced degrees in STEM fields.

As a junior majoring in electrical engineering, Mark Schafer ’20 ’22G attended a bioengineering seminar on the topic of single-walled carbon nanotubes. One of Schafer’s professors, Yevgeny Berdichevsky, was also in the audience. “Afterward, he mentioned he was surprised to see me at a bioengineering seminar,” Schafer recalls. “I explained my desire to get into research that bridged the divide between bioengineering and electrical engineering. So we kept talking, and I wound up in his lab my senior year, which led me to continue studying for a master’s degree at Lehigh with him as my advisor.”

Breaking an ankle is a tough way to discover what you want to do in life, but in Alicia Stein’s case it planted the seed that would grow into a career path.

When Stein was in middle school in Pennsylvania, she fractured her ankle three months before a big competition in Orlando.

IDEAS student overcomes challenges to represent Team USA in Italy at recent competition

Research by computer science and Engineering PhD students Jiawei Xu and Diego Salazar D'Antonio involves using robots to manipulate objects without human intervention, with the ultimate goal of helping humanity perform a range of tasks.

After he completes his PhD next May, mechanical engineering graduate student Anh Hung “Peter” Nguyen '18 '19G envisions a career in academia as a member of the faculty at a predominantly undergraduate university.

“It’s not because I’m not good at researching,” says the 26-year-old native of Vietnam, “but because I think I can contribute more in that role.”