Celebrating Excellence: Announcing the Student Presentation Award Winners at the CenTiRe Spring Conference

The CenTiRe Industry Advisory Board Spring (IAB) Conference, a hallmark event that gathers leading minds in the field of tire research and innovation, proudly announced the winners of its highly anticipated Student Presentation Awards. This semi-annual event, renowned for showcasing groundbreaking research and fostering academic excellence, once again highlighted the promising future of the industry through the work of these exceptional students.

This year’s conference, hosted by Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA brought together students, academics, and industry professionals from around the globe. The competition was open to all student researchers, with students presenting a wide array of innovative projects, each contributing valuable insights to the field of tire and rubber research. After thorough evaluation by the IAB judges, the following students emerged as the award winners:

Best Overall Presentation; Dhruvin Jasoliya, Virginia Tech University

Project Title: "Characterization and Modeling of Deformable Soils for Tire Performance Simulation"

Dhruvin captivated the judges with his innovative approach to developing a soil constitutive material model parameterization process based on testing data, which includes the study of various meshed and meshless numerical techniques used in tire soil simulations.

Best Concluding Project Presentation; Sudharsan Parthasarathy and Amir Meshkati, Virginia Tech University

Project Title: " Automated Vibration Mode Shape Characterization of Radial Tire using Zernike Moment Descriptor and Machine Learning"

The concluding project award, which involved projects that will conclude this academic year, went to Sudharsan and Amir who presented a compelling study on a tire’s vibrational behaviors for frequencies between 0 500Hz. Their project developed a machine learning based classification tool to categorize these tire mode shapes.

Best New Project Presentation; Akshay Kumar Pakala and Anudeep Reddy Vedire, University of Akron

Project Title: " Tire Cord Properties for FEA Modal and Steady State Dynamic Analysis"

The new project award, which involved projects that started this academic year, went to Akshay and Anudeep.  Their research focuses on the modelling of cord material behavior suitable for FEA modal and steady state dynamic analyses.

Each one of these award winners displayed a mastery of their research subject matter, as well as professionalism in delivering their presentation content and in answering technical questions.  CenTiRe is proud to recognize these outstanding student researchers!