Te Faye Yap, a fourth-year doctoral student in mechanical engineering (MECH) at Rice University, was one of 32 doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers from universities across the United States selected to attend the Rising Stars in Mechanical Engineering workshop.
The two-day workshop rotates each year among MIT, Berkeley and Stanford. Participants receive full support for travel, food and lodging. This year’s workshop was held Oct. 6-7 at Stanford.
Yap works in the Preston Innovation Laboratory of her adviser, Daniel J. Preston, assistant professor of MECH. Her research focuses on heat transfer, interfacial phenomena, and the temperature-dependent reaction kinetics of elastomer curing and virus inactivation, including COVID-19.
Earlier this year she received from the MECH department at Rice the 2022 Emmett T. and Geraldyne Smith Roberts Award for outstanding research. Yap earned her B.S. in MECH from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2019.