Mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Annie Weathers has won the Ben Streetman Prize, a university-wide award given each year for outstanding research by a graduate student in electronic and photonic materials and devices. The prize was created in 2001 by former students of Ben Streetman, who served as dean of the Cockrell School of Engineering from 1996 to 2008.
After receiving her bachelor of science degree in physics from New York University, Weathers came to UT Austin for graduate school. She earned her master’s degree in mechanical engineering under the direction of professor Li Shi, and she will complete her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering this spring. Her research focuses on understanding the transport and coupling of energy carriers at the nanoscale, including the transport of heat by charge carriers, lattice vibrations and magnetic excitation, in order to improve the efficiency of thermoelectric materials and devices.
The award honored her work on probing thermal and thermoelectric transport in organic and inorganic systems. As part of the prize, she presented a seminar on fundamental studies of the transport of heat carriers in a variety of complex organic and inorganic materials at the university’s Microelectronics Research Center.
