The College of Engineering has announced the 2025 recipients of its Longsview Fellowships, Carleone Faculty Awards, and Grimes Family Faculty Awards. These competitive awards support faculty research that advances Drexel’s strategic priorities, including interdisciplinary collaboration, technology commercialization, and solutions to societal challenges.
The Longsview Fellowships fund projects at the intersection of health, sustainability, renewable energy, and smart cities. This year’s awardees include Yue (Luna) Zheng, PhD, and Lifeng Zhou, PhD, for integrating soft robotic hands into smart living systems; Jill Wenderott, PhD, and Shadi Rezapour, PhD, for developing an AI-powered virtual lab assistant; Amanda Carneiro Marques, PhD, and Fernanda Campos da Cruz Rios, PhD, for studying circular water strategies in urban flood mitigation; and Miguel Pando, PhD, with collaborators, for enhancing 3D printing of low-carbon, eco-friendly building materials.
The Carleone Faculty Awards, which support high-risk, high-reward research, were awarded to Wenderott for accelerating synthesizability of advanced materials, and to Zhou for advancing autonomous vehicle perception and control.
The Grimes Family Faculty Awards, emphasizing innovation and Drexel’s research leadership, went to Caroline Schauer, PhD, for investigating materials in the chocolate waste stream, and James Tangorra, PhD, for studying sensorimotor control in older adults cycling in real and virtual environments. These projects span disciplines from engineering to health sciences, showcasing the collaborative research driving Drexel’s innovation agenda.
