2023 Intern Awards Showcase Talent at Research Park
The Research Park celebrated the 17th annual Intern Awards Ceremony and Picnic to recognize the outstanding work done by the student interns across the Research Park’s 120+ companies.
The ceremony was held on Tuesday, July 25, and recognized finalists and winners from a variety of disciplines, majors, and colleges from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This is a wonderful representation of the cross-curricular work that takes place at Research Park.
There were six awards presented:
Award Categories:
- Best Startup Intern
- Best Technical Innovation
- Best Business Innovation
- Most Outstanding Undergraduate Student Intern
- Most Outstanding Graduate Student Intern
- Most Competent and Collaborative Team
Best Startup Intern
Winner:
Brisa McGrath – Natrion Inc. – Laboratory Assistant
Undergraduate in Materials Science and Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
“This is the second summer that Brisa has interned at Natrion. Brisa’s role as a laboratory assistant within the R&D team primarily involves supporting efforts to prototype and test advanced solid-state Li-metal batteries. The components that Brisa assembled were subsequently used in prototype cells that have since demonstrated world-leading power and safety performance. Most of Brisa’s contributions entailed process optimization. She standardized recipes, mixing procedures, quality control metrology, and other techniques that were later implemented team-wide. Her meticulousness and attention to detail made her one of the team’s two trusted cell builders.”
Finalists:
Nicholas Fazio – Boston Bioprocess – Bioprocessing Intern
Masters in Bioprocessing and Bioenergy
Yiming Zhao – Hinetics LLC – Electrical Engineering Intern
Undergraduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Best Technical Innovation
Winner:
Ning Jiang – Aviatrix – Software Engineer Intern
PhD in Math | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
“Ning’s primary project this summer was to work with the supporting team to move [a network anomaly detection] feature to the next level. Ning spent time evaluating different algorithms that provided better overall characteristics. For the various algorithms, she compared training/evaluation time, detection accuracy, seasonality, and adaptability. She worked with another intern to find sources of input data. Each set of conclusions were summarized clearly in a series of presentations. One example of Ning’s diligence comes from a meeting we had with an AWS engineer describing their framework for supporting random-cut forest models. The day before Ning had read up on random cut forests and ran her sample data through that algorithm. She was able to explain to me the details of how random cut forests work and how they differ from some other algorithms we were considering.”
Finalists:
Ganesh Prasad – John Deere – Data Science Intern
Masters in Predictive Analytics and Risk Management | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Aniket Ajay Lad – Brunswick – Electrification Engineering Intern
PhD in Mechanical Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Best Business Innovation
Winner:
Suyash Nagumalli – AbbVie Innovation Center – VR Developer
Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
“Suyash’s project set out to create a virtual environment to simulate the patient screening process from the perspective [of] the Principal Investigator. To build out this project, Suyash illustrated initiative, leadership, and innovative thinking. Suyash had never used AI within VR technology before, nor had he extensively written Python code. However, he worked tirelessly to build out the VR environment by learning on his own, leveraging others’ expertise, and through countless hours of trial and error. Not once did he complain, not once did he say that he didn’t know how to do it – if he didn’t know something, he would spend time researching videos to teach himself the concept. Suyash is an exemplary team member and has more technical and business skills than a lot of people much further into their career. He is kind, easy to work with, and is such a team player in all the ways that exemplify an exceptional intern.”
Finalists:
Angeline Lewis – AGCO Acceleration Center + Graphic Design Intern
Undergraduate in Industrial Design | College of Fine & Applied Arts
Madelyn Heidtke – John Deere + Strategic Communications Intern
Masters in Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications | College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Demi Apostolakos – Cargill Innovation Lab– Market Research & Communications Intern
Undergraduate in Advertising | College of Media
Most Outstanding Undergraduate Student Intern
Co-winner
Carlene English – Genetive – Molecular Biology Intern
Undergraduate in Environmental Sciences | College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
“Carlene’s outstanding work as an intern at Genective has exemplified her exceptional commitment to excellence. In her project, Carlene focused on 
refining crucial aspects of an assay. [She] diligently collected samples from numerous plants, ground the tissue samples, and performed luminescence protein expression assays. Carlene meticulously monitored the larvae feeding process and measured the amount of remaining leaf tissue each day. These refinements significantly contributed to the accuracy and reliability of the assay, furthering the team’s research objectives. Carlene’s dedication to her work extended beyond the lab. Despite having no prior experience with the R programming language, she eagerly embraced its use for data analysis. Through her proactive and enthusiastic approach, she quickly acquired the necessary skills and applied them proficiently.”
Most Outstanding Undergraduate Student Intern
Co-winner
Charlie Du – Brunswick i-Jet – Computer Graphics Software Developer Intern
Undergraduate in Computer Sciences | Grainger College of Engineering
“Charlie has been our CGI Engineering Intern at i-Jet for 2 years and has been 
instrumental in our CES showcase work and building out our Unreal engine pipeline. He designed and built the framework used for our boating simulations in Unreal and had collaborated in our CES project for 2 years now. In Jan 2023, he traveled to Las Vegas to help set up and facilitate the simulator when it ran in the show. This summer, he took on more leadership into his role when he led the CGI intern team for our CES 2024 project. He stepped up to the leadership responsibilities after our FTE manager had to step away due to another priority.”
Finalists:
Matt Straczek – Ameren – Innovation Intern: Application Development
Undergraduate in Computer Science | Grainger College of Engineering
Asher Mai – Rivian – Machine Learning Intern
Undergraduate in Electrical and Computer Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
Most Outstanding Graduate Student Intern
Winner:
Muhammad Talal Khalid – Electric Power Engineers Power Systems Intern
PhD in Electrical Engineering | Grainger College of Engineering
“Talal is an outstanding professional and engineer that is making significant contributions to the power systems and electric utility industry with his work on electrification. Talal has been a critical member of the team and has worked on projects including electric utility electric vehicle strategy and readiness planning, commercial customer fleet electrification assessments, and a Department of Energy grant for grid informed smart EV charging. Talal performed research and developed detailed presentation material and discussion guides for meetings with executive leadership at a municipal electric utility including the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Talal single-handedly implemented a customer relationship management software solution in a matter of weeks and developed workflow automation and detailed program processes to meet the utility client needs.”
Finalists:
Xochilth Saldana – John Deere – Data Science Intern
PhD in Agricultural and Biological Engineering | College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Sanjana Pai – Country Financial – Data Science Intern
Masters in Information Management | School of Information Sciences
Most Competent and Collaborative Team
Winner:
Robin Hazard – UX UI Design Intern
Undergraduate in Graphic Design | College of Fine and Applied Arts
Maddie Kwon – UX UI Design Intern
Undergraduate in Brain & Cognitive Science | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
“Maddie and Robin have served a R&D team serving Cargill Protein North America. This initiative called ‘factory of the future’ involves a series of cutting-edge ways in which technology can be employed to transform Cargill’s core manufacturing and production facilities. Our client has been so impressed by Robin’s and Maddie’s design acumen, focus, depth of thought, thoroughness of recommendations and professionalism in how they interact with stakeholders. Our client has been shocked at the speed by which this two intern team has moved through client intiatives and how self sufficient they’ve been able to operate.”
Finalists:
Bridgette Mason – Agronomic and Environmental Sciences (AES) Intern
Masters in Atmospheric Science | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Samantha Bryan – Agronomic and Environmental Sciences (AES) Intern
Masters in Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics at Colorado State University
Sahar Yousefi – Agronomic and Environmental Sciences (AES) Intern
Masters in Agricultural and Biological Engineering | College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences
Sam Theobald – Agronomic and Environmental Sciences (AES) Intern
Undergraduate in Professional Meteorology at Mississippi State University
Adaeze Asonye – UX UI Design Intern
Undergraduate in Information Science | School of Information Sciences
Sara Lin – UX UI Design Intern
Undergraduate in Graphic Design | College of Fine and Applied Arts
Photos from the event can be viewed on our media gallery.