Doctoral student Kayane Dingilian wins AAAR award for video

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Kayane Dingilian won second place in the 2019 AAAR Video Competition
Kayane Dingilian won second place in the 2019 AAAR Video Competition

Doctoral student Kayane Dingilian, a member of Professor Barbara Wyslouzil's research group, won 2nd place in the first-ever American Association of Aerosol Research (AAAR) Video Competition held at the 2019 AAAR Annual Conference (Portland, OR; October 2019).

The objective of the competition is for students to hone their scientific communication skills in a video of three minutes or less that explains their research in such a way that the general public can better understand aerosol research and the role it can play in solving societal problems.

The assignment was to create a video that grapples with core AAAR content, is easy to understand, thought-provoking, and fun to watch. Finalist videos were displayed at a booth during the poster sessions.

Dingilian's research pertains to carbon capture, a multidisciplinary research field aimed at mitigating climate change by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere. Chemical engineers approach the problem from different angles, such as through the use of specialized membranes, computational modeling or particle technology/chemical looping. 

"I thought it would be cool to invite others in the department to speak on the carbon capture research they do and how aerosol research plays a role," Dingilian said.

 

Earlier this year, Dingilian won an honorable mention at The Ohio State University's 2019 Hayes Graduate Research Forum, where only five prizes were awarded in the Poster Competition for Engineering. Last year, she won one of several research poster prizes at the department's 2018 Graduate Research Symposium.

Dingilian's video award, however, occurs in a much wider arena. The American Association for Aerosol Research is a premier scientific association that engenders high-quality aerosol research in diverse technical disciplines and provides international scientific forums and publications in all aspects of aerosol research.

In 2018, Dingilian's advisor, Professor Barbara Wyslouzil, was elected a lifetime Fellow of AAAR for significant contributions to the discipline, an honor that has only been extended to one to three individuals annually since the organization's inception in 2009.