Marco Nino

Marco Nino was a first-generation engineering graduate. In 2016, he transferred from Mt. San Antonio Community College in Walnut, CA to University of Iowa to pursue BS in Biomedical Engineering. He graduated with a BS in 2019 while also gaining a year of undergraduate research experience in Prof. Raghavan’s lab. He joined Dr. Raghavan’s lab as a Carver Fellow in 2019 to pursue a PhD in BME with Prof. Mubeen as a co-advisor. During his PhD studies, Marco leveraged principles in both the fields of electrochemical materials and biomedical device design to develop a novel electrochemical catheter for cardiac output monitoring. He lead-authored or co-authored five journal papers in this and related areas of research. His invention resulted in one filed patent. Marco also held student leadership roles in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the ASME Bioengineering Division and completed a summer internship at Imperative Care, Inc., CA, makers of neurovascular catheters. Upon successful defense of his PhD dissertation on the development of a novel electrochemical catheter, he graduated in December 2023. Since February 2024, he works with Terumo-Neuro, Inc. as senior research and development engineer, one of the premier medical device companies in the United States and makers of advanced devices for neuro-vascular applications. 

Levi Kirby

Levi Kirby was a first-generation college student from a rural area in western Illinois. He completed a PhD in industrial engineering under the supervision of Prof. Xuan Song in 2023. During his PhD studies, Levi published eight journal papers, four as the first author, and was awarded a U.S. Patent as a co-inventor. He also obtained a graduate certificate in college teaching from the University of Iowa. Levi has been recognized with several prestigious awards, including the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) E. Wayne Kay Graduate Scholarship, the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Biles, Parsaei and Zaloom Endowed Scholarship, and a finalist position in the university-wide 3MT competition at the University of Iowa. He also received the Best Paper Award in the QSR track at the INFORMS conference and was selected as one of the 60 participants at the National School on Neutron and X-Ray Scattering at Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Upon graduation, he received multiple offers from academia, industry, and national laboratories. He ultimately chose to focus on serving rural students as an instructional assistant professor at the University of Wyoming.

Wenqi Duan

Wenqi Duan received a bachelor’s degree with a double major in physics and mathematics, magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr college. She was the recipient of Honorable Mention for the 2017 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, was the winner of the Best Graduate Poster award at the 2018 College of Engineering Research Open House and the finalist for the Best Student Poster Award at the 2018 World Conference on Photovoltaic Energy Conversion (WCPEC-7) held at the Big Island, Hawaii. While at the University of Iowa, Wenqi published several original research peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings, as well as supported publishing of two high-impact review articles on black silicon technology. Her dissertation was on the development of nanobioelectronic sensors for cancer monitoring and water quality sensing. She mastered the field of semiconductor nanofabrication to conduct her PhD research. After completing a PhD in 2020, she joined Thorlabs, a leading optics and photonics components global manufacturer, as a scientific writer for new product lines and was recently promoted to senior technical marketer, new products. 

Qingyu Yang

Qingyu Yang studied quality and reliability engineering for a PhD, during which he published four articles in leading journals. His achievements as a PhD student were recognized with several awards at the University of Iowa. Upon completion, Qingyu became a research fellow in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan. He then joined the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Wayne State University as a faculty member. Currently, he is an associate professor with tenure and the chair of the PhD and research program in the department. Qingyu's research interests cover a broad range of areas, including data analytics, reliability and optimal maintenance policy, material informatics, AI-physics modeling, and applications in complex manufacturing systems. He is the director of Reliability and Intelligent Systems Lab and the co-director of Material Process and Manufacturing Lab at Wayne State University. His research has been recognized with a number of best paper awards from leading journals and conferences in his field, including IISE Transactions, Technometrics, and the INFORMS and IISE Annual Conferences.