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164 I-CONNECT007 I REAL TIME WITH... IPC APEX EXPO 2024 SHOW & TELL MAGAZINE by Michelle Te • I-Connect007 Two Auburn University doctoral candidates authored a poster on drop shock perfor- mance of solder alloys in BGA assemblies that won Best Student Poster at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. They received a $750 cash prize and a $2,000 scholarship. Palash Vyas is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Industrial Engineering with more than three years of research experi- ence in reliability testing of PCBs. His paper was co-authored by Soroosh Alavi, who has bachelor's and master's of science degrees in industrial engineering and is now in his third year as a doctoral student in industrial and systems engineering, while also working on a master's degree in data science. Both students are well-known to the IPC Education Foundation. Palash is a former president of the IPC Student Chapter at Auburn University. He also won Best Student Paper in 2022 for solder joint reliability dur- ing thermal cycling. Soroosh joined his IPC Student Chapter at Auburn in 2022. Both have won member and leadership scholar- ships over the past four years. Of their 2024 poster, the judges noted that "the research is very novel" and "there is not Drop Shock Reliability Best Student Poster Best Student Poster