On April 30, 2022, Ashwini Gupta, CaSE PhD candidate, was selected as the Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Public Engagement through Research Communication winner of the 2022 Empower Your Pitch competition.
Held by PHutures and open to all doctoral students at JHU, Empower Your Pitch is a research competition that develops the research communication skills of presenters from across the Hopkins’ graduate schools to diverse audiences.
Ashwini is a researcher in Prof. Lori Graham-Brady’s group who is collaborating with a group of scientists at Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute (HEMI) with the goal to design data-driven faster computational models to study uncertainty in very complex physical systems. His pitch, titled “How Artificial Intelligence Designs Stronger Structures” drew on his experience designing novel methods in computational mechanics. He was selected from a group of 16 finalists to receive the award.
The competition empowers presenters to communicate the value of their research at any stage of development and across all disciplines using presentations that include varied elements, including traditional spoken word presentations, music, poetry, rap, electronic media, and props. The goal is to capture the audience’s attention, convey the essence of their research, and explain its relevance to their listeners in a maximum time frame of three minutes.
View a recording of the grand finale below. Ashwini’s pitch begins around 1:06:14.