![](https://philadelphia-stle.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2022-Photo-Qifu-Wang-1024x770.jpg)
The Philadelphia Section of the STLE is pleased to award a $1,000 Scholarship to Qifu Wang, a graduate student in the College of Mechanical Engineering at Villanova University.
Qifu’s dissertation research is focused on soft, porous lubrication, where he uses highly compressible porous media to study lift generation resulting in reduced frictional drag. While this work is modeled after biological systems, the practical applications extend much further. Qifu has developed a comprehensive theoretical and experimental framework to characterize this phenomenon for future application.
To date, Qifu has authored three papers that will soon be submitted to top scientific journals in the field. He also holds one provisional patent and has presented three conference papers at the American Physical Society Annual meeting and the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition.