Andrew Kocak (right) served as mentor for students from East Tennessee High Schools.
Mr. Andrew Kocak, a PhD student working with Prof. Zhili Feng and Prof. Yanfei Gao, served as a mentor to the UT Math and Science Summer Program. Shown in the picture are a number of high school students from Loudon, Grainger, Pigeon Forge and Jefferson High Schools, as this program aims to educate East Tennessee rural county high school students. For over one hundred participants, Andrew’s team won the First Place in the final competition, beating many faculty-led teams. Andrew currently pursues his PhD work under the Manufacturing and Materials Joining Innovation Center (Ma2JIC), primarily using an Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) framework. The high school students have benefited tremendously from his ICME skills, and they are motivated to pursue STEM education in college.