A Kettering University senior shared top honors for undergraduate research at the recent 2012 ASME Internal Combustion Engine Division Fall Technical Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

F. Zak Tilocco was one of two students honored for winning the 2012 ASME ICEF Undergraduate Student Presentation Competition.  Tilocco's research was on Image Processing Techniques for Determining Needle Lift in Fuel Injectors. 

Tilocco is a dual major in Applied Physics and Applied Math at Kettering.  He is from Solon, Ohio.

He shared the ASME ICEF honors with Mr. David Vuilleumier from the University of California - Berkeley. Both received au gratis participation in ASME's 2012 Fall Technical Conference and travel expenses to Vancouver for the conference in September.

The research project was part of his professional co-op experiences at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.  He shared the research credit with his Argonne National Lab supervisors Alan L. Kastengren and Christopher F. Powell.  All work at Argonne’s Transportation R&D division, which is led by Kettering University Trustee Larry Johnson.  

"It is great to be an Applied Physics major and do cutting edge Applied Science research work in areas such as transportation and automotive using the Advanced Photon Source facilities at Argonne National Lab," Tilocco said.

It was only the second year that ASME has hosted the ICEF Undergraduate Student Presentation Competition, which is designed to recruit bright young minds to the internal combustion engine field to help solve challenging and pervasive engineering problems. The activity also exposes members of industry and academia to future employees and graduate students.