Graduate student Justus Ndukaife has received the 2016 College of Engineering Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The Outstanding Research Award recognizes students who have demonstrated excellence and leadership in research through publications, participation in professional organizations and willingness to mentor others.

Justus conducts research at the interface between nanophotonics and micro and nanofluidics to develop novel Lab-on-a-Chip devices for dynamic control, trapping, directed assembly and on-chip sensing of nanoscale objects . His works have been published in several top peer-reviewed journals including Science, Nature Nanotechnology, ACS Nano and Nano letters and presented at several leading conferences and meetings including Gordon Research Conference, Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics, Materials Research Society meetings and SPIE Optics and Photonics conference, ASME conference and at the summer school on complex photonics in Italy. He is also a co-inventor of four technologies with patent pending in the United States. In addition to conducting cutting-edge research, Justus also serves as a student leader. He is the President of the Purdue Student Chapter of the Optical Society of America and the Nanotechnology Student Advisory Council.