Sarah Malik ’20
Business and Engineering student Sarah Malik ’20 was recently named recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow Program (GRFP) award. Granted only to a select group of promising students every year, the grant supports graduate studies in areas of national need.
Sarah will be working with Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics faculty Dr. Antonios Kontsos on building intelligent systems for structural health monitoring. More specifically, her work will be to take structural components (vehicle components and structures) and develop digital models of those components using machine learning techniques. Recently, Sarah shared a bit about her experience and the award.
Congratulations on your grant award! Do you have a research interest that you plan to work on as a PhD student? Can you tell us about it?
I’ve been working on building an intelligent system for structural health monitoring. The concept is a digital twin, which is a digital representation of a physical system. Once we have this digital representation, the goal is to have live data being fed into this representation so I can predict when the structure will fail. The structure could be an aircraft component, a bridge, or just about anything. My current work focuses on the data stream aspect and how we don’t want all the structural data coming in live, because the average Boeing 737 has a tenure of 30 years, so we don’t want all that structural data being fed into the model. We want filtered data and relevant data. So, my work will focus on the way the data is being fed in using an internet of things paradigm and layered computing.
Is there a career ambition that led you to this fellowship? Where do you see the fellowship leading you to long-term?
Eventually I’d like to become a professor and be in the research world. Similar to Dr. Kontsos, I’d like to support students through different industry and academic collaborations. That’s why I like Drexel—we bring industry to our academic focus.
Your focus changed over your time at Drexel, from management science to the internet of things. Walk us through your path to what you’re working on today.
The tying string between these experiences has been data analytics, which has been my passion during my journey of my tenure here at Drexel. All three of my co-ops at Thompson-Reuters, Comcast, and my third one at Comcast in a different role, all dealt with data analytics and business intelligence.
How do you define data analytics?
I define it as the incorporation of 3 phases: the collection of data, storing the data, and finally the analysis. The type of data does not really matter- when I was at co-op it was customer data, and now it's sensor data. What matters is how you use the data to enable actionable insights for informed decision making. I enjoy this field because it can be applied to a variety of industries and case problems.
My experiences have been in these three areas, through my co-ops, or in my research.
How did those experiences lead you to your present work?
I really like the application. Since I’m a Business and Engineering major I like finding that tangible piece (which is why my concentration is mechanical engineering). I love building things. Dealing with aircraft has been my dream since elementary school and so it would be amazing to apply data analytics to the physical structure of an aircraft. The research I’ve been involved with has really led me to combine both aspects, to literally combine data analytics and engineering.
What have you been doing since the quarantine started? Do you have any tips for staying healthy and productive during COVID 19?
I play the violin. I have been playing since the third grade. I ordered some new music above my level and every now and then I’ll pull out my violin and play something new. I’ve been working on a piece by Bach and again it’s above my level but little by little I’m getting there.
I hear you’re also involved with the French Club. Could you tell me about that?
We started with like 5 members and now we have over 100 and got recognized by the French Embassy. We have an executive board that we plan events with and engaging the French community in Philadelphia has been very cool.