Gabriele Vigevani, BSAC graduate student, has been named a winner of the Young Scientist Award by the Technical Program Commitee of the 2008 Symposium on Ultrasonic Electronics (USE2008).

Vigevani was named winner for his outstanding presentation on "Modeling of Thermoelastic Damping in Piezoelectric Aluminum Nitride Tuning Forks," co-authored by Jan H. Kuypers and Albert P. Pisano.

Gabriele received his B.S. and Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Politecnico di Milano in 2004. In 2001 he spent one academic year at NTNU (Norway) as visiting Scholar within the Erasmus program. He developed his final project at the Technion of Haifa on a "Multi DOF micro scanning mirror" under the supervision of Professor I. Bucher and Professor A. Cigada. From 2004 to 2006 he worked at EATON Automotive (Torino) as design engineer in the Advanced Valve Train Development where his work focused on Variable Valve Actuation and Cost Reduction Valve Train Design. In 2006 he started his PhD at Berkeley where he joined Professor Pisano's research group (BMAD). His current research topic focuses on Aluminum Nitride for Inertial Sensors and RF-MEMS.

The official award ceremony will be held during the next USE symposium (USE2009), which will be held on November 18-21, 2009 in Kyoto, Japan.