FAMU-FSU College of Engineering doctoral candidate Yourri Dessureault took second place honors in the overall poster competition at the National Space & Missile Materials Symposium (NSMMS) and the Commercial and Government Responsive Access to Space Technology Exchange (CRASTE) conference in June 2019.
Dessureault is a graduate student and researcher based in the college-associated High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI). He is part of the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (IME) department at the college.
The win marks the first time that students swept all the top overall awards at the conference. To do so, they beat out posters submitted by other academic institutions, private industry and government agencies, such as NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
In addition to placing second in the overall category, Dessureault took placed third in the student poster division. This is the second year IME and HPMI researchers have won awards in the conference’s overall poster competition. In 2017, Claire Jolowsky received the first place overall award for her research poster. In 2016, Sophia Garcia took second place in the student poster completion. Garcia was the only undergraduate to win the award.
Posters are reviewed by committee of experts for their scientific merit, engineering methodology and poster presentation.
The NSMMS and CRASTE conferences are focused on issues related to space, missile, hypersonic systems and a variety of ground-breaking commercial space topics necessary for national defense, research and development pursuits.
“I am just happy that I could represent the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering to space exploration industry,” said Dessureault. He also expressed his gratitude to Dr. Ayou Hao and fellow Ph.D. candidate Zhe Liu for their contributions to the winning poster.