Jingye Tan

Where are you from?  

Taishan shi, China

Why did you choose UB?

For its amazing engineering program and scholarship opportunities.

What do you like most about engineering at UB?

The faculty! Amazing professors like Dr. Brad Darrall and Dr. Gary Dargush have given me great support and opportunities as teachers and as friends during my time here. They’ve guided me on a great path toward graduate school study, and I recently received my first acceptance, with hopefully more to come soon! I hope to one day be able to build a scholarship at UB in their honor to return the favor.

Why did you choose to go into engineering?

I was trying to learn some science that I wasn't good at in high school, then I ended up doing very well at it!

What is your favorite place on campus?

My favorite spot is the math building.

What are you working on right now?

I am currently working on research relating computational mechanics and physics-based machine learning. In a nutshell, I look at the physical world from a probabilistic standpoint, incorporating prior knowledge (engineering common sense), mathematical models, and some sort of data, to understand the mechanism behind all sorts of phenomena, and make reliable predictions.  I recently published a paper on a highly prestigious journal, the International Journal of Plasticity, and received an award from the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition.

What have you done that you are most proud of?

I’m proud of presenting my research on fluid mechanics at international conferences, as well as my undergraduate teaching. It’s also been a huge honor to be nominated for the SUNY Chancellor's Award, and awarded numerous scholarships at UB.

Has there been a particular faculty or staff member that has been formative during your time at UB?  

There are countless UB faculty and staff that have helped and inspired me since I first landed in Buffalo, particularly since I started my PhD program two years ago. I have learned more from my PhD advisor Dr. Danial Faghihi than everything I had learned in my student life before! He has especially taught me about how to remotely manage and execute computer programs from UB's Center for Computational Research (a supercomputing facility), which has been the most important skill for me to continue working on my research. This has been especially important as waves of the pandemic have kept me locked down at home!

What are you passionate about?

I’m passionate about learning more about computational science, in hopes of sharing my knowledge as a professor one day. Computation is a very recent and rapidly growing field, with a great appreciation of computing power. It is just fascinating to me how much we could do with math formulas and computer codes. 

What are your future plans?

As I am currently in the PhD program at UB, my short-term plan is of course to achieve my graduate degree with fruitful research results. I aim to participate and present research findings in more international conferences to the top scientists in my field of study, and learn more ideals from different perspectives. And for a long-term goal, I aim to be one of the top scientists in my field!

What is your advice to prospective engineering students?

Don't hesitate to learn something completely new to you or something you weren't good at. UB is the place to gain amazing knowledge, with access to a hub of opportunities, for you to be amazing.

Jingye Tan is a recipient of the Gustav and Grete Zimmer Memorial Scholarship.