Students Showcase Communication Skills at Webb-Donnell Competitions
March 25, 2026
By Tracie Troha
Students in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering took center stage March 18 at the third annual Webb-Donnell Communication Competitions, held at the Exhibition Hall. The event highlighted the importance of clear, engaging communication in engineering and featured graduate and undergraduate competitors.
Five Ph.D. students participated in the live, final round of the Graduate Quick Talks Research Communications Challenge, each delivering a five-minute presentation on their research. Johnny Sentmanat, a mechanical engineering doctoral student, earned first place for his talk, “BeamMap: Mapping the Way to Cure Disease.”
“One of my favorite things to do is take my research and try to explain it to a broad audience,” Sentmanat said. “For me, it was like a puzzle — what is going to draw people? How can that translate?”
Sentmanat said he enjoyed the process of creating his presentation for the competition.
“I love visualization,” he said. “I’m a very visual person, so being able to do that was fun.”
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Addy Bateman, a bioengineering Ph.D. student, placed second for her presentation, “Smart Stent Grafts: A Modernized Way of Monitoring Vascular Disease.” She said simplifying her complex research was both challenging and rewarding.
“It was really tough, but it was also nice because it lets you whittle down to the most important parts of your research,” Bateman said. “It was fun to go back to the foundational component that initially got me excited about the research.”
The event also featured the Explain It! Engineering Concept Video Competition. Five undergraduate finalists, selected from 25 submissions, displayed posters with QR codes linking to their videos.
Rihan Mammen, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student, won first place for his video, “Noise Cancellation — How Does It Work?”
“We had a lot of freedom to pick the topic, which I think added to it,” Mammen said. “I liked seeing all the videos from the other finalists. It’s really interesting to see what drives a person.”
Other undergraduate winners were Joshua Murzello (second), Kyle Tennison (third), Aparna Srinidhi Jagannathan (fourth), and Maya Sethuraman (fifth).
Tennison said the competition offered a creative outlet beyond coursework.
“This was a break from my typical undergraduate coursework. I love making videos,” he said.
Sethuraman said feedback from her friends helped shape her project.
“I asked my non-engineer friends if it made sense,” she said. “Getting their feedback was fun.”
The competition, made possible by the Frank K. Webb Charitable Trust, awarded a total of $15,000 in prizes. Named in honor of Frank K. Webb, ME 1938, and Jeffrey Donnell, the first Frank K. Webb Academic Professional Chair in Communication Skills, the event celebrates their legacy and commitment to communication in engineering.
“Events like this remind us that engineering is not just about solving technical problems. It’s also about helping others understand those solutions,” said Jill Fennell, the current Frank K. Webb Academic Professional Chair in Communication Skills.
The competitions are part of the Woodruff School’s Webb Communication Program. The program emphasizes that strong engineering requires clearly explaining ideas so others can understand, trust, and act on them.
“Throughout the curriculum, our students practice communicating design decisions, experimental results, and engineering reasoning to different audiences,” Fennell said. “The competitions give them a chance to take those skills a step further by sharing their work with a broader audience.”
