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Collaboration at the Core: CETA's Reihaneh Jamshidi Awarded for Academic Excellence

Two students participating in lab with Professor Jamshidi.

Reihaneh Jamshidi, PhD, is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA). Her talented performance and dedicated involvement at the University led her to be recently awarded the Belle K. Ribicoff Junior Faculty Prize. This award recognizes a junior faculty member who showcases teaching, scholarly, or service excellence.

Jamshidi began teaching at UHart after finishing her PhD program in 2018. She explained that her teaching style is engagement-oriented because “Interaction and engagement are important for high-level students, so they feel encouraged to approach me and participate in class. I want to maintain a relaxed but productive learning environment, so students feel comfortable engaging." As a result, her lessons incorporate group work activities to help students develop professionally and grow collaboratively.

Outside of the classroom, Jamshidi is involved in various student and faculty-related campus organizations that propel campus involvement. She is a faculty advisor for the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and is a member of the International Scholarship Education and Engagement (I-SEE) affinity group at UHart. SWE offers a like-minded space for female engineering students to develop a sense of belonging and find career-development opportunities. Similarly, I-SEE helps the community learn about the diversity and cultures of international faculty. “Being involved with the campus community is valuable because it creates stronger faculty-to-student relationships,"Jamshidi shares.

“Interaction and engagement are important for high-level students, so they feel encouraged to approach me and participate in class. I want to maintain a relaxed but productive learning environment, so students feel comfortable engaging.”

Reihaneh Jamshidi, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, CETA
Portrait of Professor Jamshidi smiling.

For the past year, Jamshidi worked with undergraduate students on a project partly sponsored by the Greenberg Junior Faculty Research Grant and CT NASA Space Grant. The project was developed to understand the effect of material composition on polymer composites' static and dynamic properties. Participants also created a model to predict the performance of multi-layer structures under mechanical load based on their inherent material properties and interactions at their surface. The significance of the research may benefit the manufacturing of biomedical devices, such as wearable devices for health-monitoring applications.

One of the participating students applied and received the Dorothy Goodwin Scholarship to continue their work, and then presented at the Women Advancement Initiatives Symposium. Jamshidi presented her part of the project at the Materials Research Society (MRS) national conference and hopes to have it published in a journal.

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Eve Betterini
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