Haider Hasan

I will be graduating from Drexel University in June 2011 with a Bachelor’s of Science with Honors and a Master’s of Science with Thesis in Mechanical Engineering and additional minors in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. From there I will be starting at the University of California, Berkeley to pursue a PhD in Mechanical Engineering with Designated Emphasis in Computational Science & Engineering, focus in Energy Science & Technology, specialization in Combustion with Minors in Mathematics and Physics. I will be given full financial support with cash stipend and health insurance provided by the US Department of Defense through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Program. While at Drexel, I was strongly interested in doing research as an undergraduate. As part of the Pennoni Honors College, I got involved in the STAR Undergraduate Research Program doing research in Plasma Sterilization at the A.J. Drexel Plasma Institute under the supervision of Dr. Alexander Fridman. I continued to work on the research I had started as a freshman as part of STAR and it eventually matured into my Master’s Thesis. As part of my first co-op, I did 6 months of full time work at the Drexel Plasma Institute and made several research publications since then. I was funded by Drexel several times as an undergraduate to present the research I did at international research conferences, such as the NATO Advanced Study Institute, and ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Symposium. At these conferences, I communicated my research to leaders in the field by giving lectures and presenting technical posters. My second co-op was at Valero Energy Corporation, the largest oil refiner in North America. There, at the Delaware City Refinery, I worked in the field as a Reliability and Project Engineer, learning how hands-on applied engineering is done. Besides managing several projects with budgets greater than $10,000, I also successfully performed root cause analysis on the plant’s alkylation unit after a previous study by DuPont was inconclusive. I am excited and enthusiastic about applying the skills I have learned at Drexel to solving some of the most important contemporary engineering problems our society has ever faced for the rest of my career.