Two postdoctoral scholars from the School of Engineering were among eight UAB postdocs honored this fall with awards from UAB. Ossama Ramadan, Ph.D., in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering was named UAB’s Most-esteemed Postdoc, and Philipp Steinmetz, Ph.D., was recognized as the university’s Extraordinary First-Year Postdoc.
The Most-esteemed Postdoc Award is given to the postdoc with an impressive number of peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and posters.
Ossama Ramadan’s research at the Transportation Engineering and Development Laboratory (TREND Lab) focuses on mitigating traffic congestion and improving surface transportation in the United States, and he has worked on multiple projects funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation. His nominators hold him in high regard as a researcher, mentor and friend, saying he goes out of his way to help young researchers become comfortable and successful in the lab.
“He welcomes the new students in our program and helps them to navigate successfully through the demands of the graduate student life,” one nominator wrote. “He has co-mentored graduate students as part of his postdoctoral assignments, built great working relationships with peers and administrators and demonstrated professionalism in all his dealings.”
The Extraordinary First-year Postdoc Award is given to the first-year postdoc who has become an immediate asset to the lab. When Steinmetz arrived at UAB after finishing his doctoral work at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, he hit the ground running in the lab of Amber Genau, Ph.D., learning things such as repairing furnaces and running electron microscopes.
In 2018, he has been the first author on four published papers, with another under review, and he helps supervise and direct the other students working in Genau’s lab.
“I truly believe Philipp is a crucial part of what has made Dr. Genau's lab such a productive and friendly lab environment,” a nominator wrote. “He has done all he can to be kind, helpful and effective on every project he works on.”