Mechanical Engineering Group Wins Award for Best Technical Paper at Society Meeting

Submitted

Sujan Ghosh

A group paper led by recent doctoral graduate Sujan K. Ghosh received the Al Sonntag Award from the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers at the society's Annual Meeting and Exhibition in May in Long Beach, California.

The Sonntag Award was established in 1983 and is given to a society member or members authoring the best technical paper on solid lubricants published by the society in the year preceding.

In addition to Ghosh, now an assistant professor at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the authors included:

• Nathaniel Harris, senior graduate assistant, University of Arkansas  
• Neda Mahmoudi, research and development engineer, SurfTec LLC   
• Dipankar Choudhury, staff medical device engineer, Dexcom
• Josue A. Goss, research scientist, University of Arkansas 
• Samuel Beckford, founder and CEO, SurfTec LLC    
• Min Zou, Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering, University of Arkansas

The paper, titled "Improving the Tribological Performances of PDA + PTFE Nanocomposite Coatings by Hot Compaction," was published in Tribology Transactions in 2021.

Distinguished Professor Min Zou accepts the Al Sonntag Award on behalf of current and former members of her mechanical engineering research group. (Photo by EZ Event Photography and courtesy of Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers)

In addition, Zou's group presented four papers at the May meeting by first authors Ghosh, Mahyar Afshar Mohajer, Charles Miller, and Colin Phelan, respectively.  

Zou advised Ghosh while he was completing his Ph.D. and currently serves as Harris' Ph.D. advisor, while Choudhury was a postdoctoral fellow and Goss was a research scientist in Zou's research group.

The paper was completed in collaboration with Mahmoudi and Beckford, who contributed to part of the sample fabrication for the study.  

It's the third time a paper from Zou's group has won the Al Sonntag Award. As Zou's doctoral students, Beckford and Miller were the first authors of the winning papers in 2013 and 2021, respectively.

In 2019, Zou's group won the society's Edmond E. Bisson Award, which recognizes members or non-members for the best-written contribution published by the society in the prior year.