4/8/2013 Lyanne Alfaro 3 min read
Written by Lyanne Alfaro
"My advisor was an ASHRAE Fellow," Tuo said. "His research dealt with air conditioning and refrigeration systems."
To be considered for an ASHRAE Fellowship, graduate students must be nominated by a representative of the nominee's chapter. Professor Hrnjak, co-director of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center, nominated Tuo. Students may be nominated for one of six categories: Personal Honors, Personal Awards for General Society Activities, Personal Awards for Specific Society Activities, Paper Awards, Society Awards to Groups or Chapters, or Chapter and Regional Awards. According to Tuo, the application consists of three main portions: a strong GPA, research proposals, and plans.
"What matters is the relevance of your proposal plan to ASHRAE, how involved you are with the organization, and your existing membership," Tuo said.
For Tuo, his involvement exceeded that of being a member; he is also student president of the ASHRAE chapter at Illinois. With his leadership role, he organizes seminars and activities related to work fields in ASHRAE.
"It is important for students to get involved with ASHRAE academics," Tuo said. "But there are other students who also get the fellowship without any titles in ASHRAE in student chapters."
His engineering education began long before he came to the United States. In 2009, Tuo graduated from Xi’an Jiaotong University in Xi’an, China with a Master of Science in Refrigeration and Cryogenic Engineering after completing his Bachelors degree in Science in Thermal Energy and Power Engineering in 2006. In China, he took advantage of his proximity to General Electric (GE) and worked in 2008 as an Application Engineer Intern at GE in Beijing.
After receiving his Fellowship in March 2012, Tuo began to carry out his proposal, which focuses on improving the efficiency of the air conditioning in the residential system. Other research topics that Tuo plans on pursuing include increasing the efficiency of residential and automobile air conditioning systems.
As for his career after ASHRAE, Tuo said he wants to commit to performing research in the laboratory and work with the application process as opposed to theory.
"This is my fourth year [at Illinois] and I will probably graduate next year," Tuo said. "My plan is to work in a company as a research scientist. In this area, research is more focused on application. We work to try to identify the problem, and propose an effective method to solve the problem."