ME Graduate Thesis Award

The “Graduate Thesis with the Greatest Commercial Potential” award is given annually to recognize the M.S. or PhD thesis produced by a student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering which is judged to have the greatest commercial potential. The total award for winning this juried competition is $3,000, paid from the Ebner Endowed Fund. The award is split evenly between the author(s) of the winning thesis and the faculty advisor for the thesis, to be used in support of the faculty advisor’s laboratory.

The award is decided by a jury convened by the Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department. Typically, the jury consists of a faculty member, a member of the industrial advisory committee, an alumna or alumnus, and one person selected by the Chair.  The jury may, in its evaluation, decide not to make an award in a given year if no appropriate nomination has been made. This award would be announced at an appropriate end-of-the-semester social occasion.

The nomination process is that each thesis to be considered by the jury is nominated by the Faculty Advisor for that thesis. In this process, the faculty advisor writes a single- page letter of nomination for the thesis, indicating what the commercial potential of the thesis is judged to be, and submits that letter, together with a returnable copy of the thesis, to the jury or its surrogate.