| |
CSU-LA Super Eagle wins North American SAE competition
Los Angeles, CA - The high-mileage Super Eagle car built by students from California State University, Los Angeles beat thirty-nine other entries from the U.S. and Canada in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) international Supermileage competition in Michigan.
The car got 1,615 mpg. "You could get to Las Vegas for 29 cents and Sacramento for 55 cents on that kind of mileage!" said associate dean and electrical engineering professor Martin Roden of the College of Engineering, Computer Science and Technology. It was the school's fifth entry into the competition and its first win. Over the years, the team had modified the car's advanced electronic fuel injection system, aerodynamic carbon fiber-Kevlar-aluminum composite body, and ultra high-efficiency engine.
James Ettaro, associate professor of technology, was the project's faculty advisor. He was recognized by SAE as 2004 Outstanding Faculty Advisor of the Year.
Student team members included industrial technology majors Sender De La Roca, Long Diep, Douglas Hall, Brian Ho, Jeff Kay, Priscilla Ruiz, Juan Villanueva and Chris Wollonciej; ME majors Gerson Hernandez, Gina Parodi, Chris Reid, De San, Refugio Trejo and Akilesh Vedartham; EE major Steven Spikes and accounting major Michael Duffy.
The project received financial support from CSU-LA and Honeywell, SMC Pneumatics, Nissan Motors Corporation, the Southern CA section of the SAE, Cardinal Industrial Finishes, and Bosch. For more information on the competition see students.sae.org/
competitions/supermileage/.
ACS seeks minority scholarship applicants
Washington, DC - The American Chemical Society (www.acs.org) will accept 2005-06 academic year applications for its Scholars Program until March 1, 2005. The program offers financial support for underrepresented minority students in the chemical sciences.
African American, Hispanic/Latino and Native American recipients are eligible to receive $2,500 to $3,000. The awards are renewable. Students in chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemistry, environmental science and related disciplines at two- and four-year colleges are eligible.
The scholarships are supported by contributions from companies including AstraZeneca, Bayer, DuPont, GlaxoSmithKline, PPG, Procter & Gamble and Xerox. Mentoring and paid internships are offered to some program participants. For details and an online application form, visit chemistry.org/scholars or call 1-800-227-5558, extension 6250.
MIT researchers get power from spinach
Cambridge, MA - MIT researchers have incorporated a plant's ability to convert sunlight to energy into a solid-state electronic "spinach sandwich" device, creating the world's first solid-state photosynthetic solar cell.
At the heart of the device is a protein complex named Photosystem I (PSI) derived from spinach chloroplasts. PSI is ten to twenty nanometers wide. Around 100,000 of them would fit on the head of a pin.
Shuguang Zhang, associate director of MIT's center for biomedical engineering, developed a designer nanomaterial that keeps the protein complexes functional on a cold, hard surface.
Researchers from MIT, the University of Tennessee and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, including electrical and biomedical engineers, nanotechnology experts and biologists, collaborated on the project. The researchers hope to achieve a power conversion efficiency of 20 percent or more.
The work was reported in NanoLetters, a publication of the American Chemical Society.
The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.
HENAAC presents student awards and scholarships
Pasadena, CA - At the sixteenth annual Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Conference, students from coast to coast were honored with leadership awards and scholarships.
Student leadership award - graduate: Zeus Xioco-Solis, EE, Cal State U-LA.
Student leadership award - undergraduate: Jolene Mu–oz; CE, U of OK.
Ford Motor Company Fund scholars: Kenneth Armijo, ME, UNM; Dana Castillo, EE, UT-Austin; Sonia Gonzalez, ME, UT-Austin; Antoinne Machal-Cajigas, EE, MIT; Roy Villanueva, ME, UT-Pan American.
Northrop Grumman Foundation scholars: Regina Cagle, EE, Drexel; Lauren Haller, ME, U of OK; Adriana Magana, CS, UCLA; Lorena Moreno, ME, UC-Davis; Gabriel Sanchez, ME, MIT.
SBC Foundation scholars: Carlos Aguilar, ME, UT-Austin; Stephanie Brister, ME, Texas A&M-College Station; Victoria Cabrera, EE, UT-Austin; Matthew Chavez, EE, Ventura College; Juan Carlos Martinez, ME, San Jose State; Rebecca Mata, ME, Texas Tech; Stuart Moncado, CS, UCLA; Scott Norby-Cedillo, ME, UC-Berkeley; Shani Ortiz, ME, UT-Austin; Ulises Ramirez, CS, UNV-Las Vegas; Joshua Reeves, EE, Stanford; Miguel Sanchez, EE, Cal State U-LA; Judy Santa Cruz, IE, Texas A&M-Kingsville; Patricia Vela, EE, UT-Austin.
SHPE Foundation scholar: Javier Irizarry, CE PhD candidate, Purdue.
The deadline for nominations for the 2005 awards is in mid-June. See www.henaac.org for information as available.
ASME and NSBE announce partnership
New York, NY - The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) have launched a partnership that includes joint membership privileges and shared development and educational opportunities.
Members of NSBE will receive a 50 percent discount off the ASME member dues rate and student members of NSBE will be charged fifteen dollars for joining ASME. Members of ASME will receive a 50 percent discount off the NSBE member/student member rate.
The groups will also jointly sponsor workshops, technical and professional development programs, and educational and student activities at their conferences, seminars and forums.
For more information, see www.nsbe.org or www.asme.org.
CCNY joins IBM's Academic Initiative
New York, NY - IBM has chosen the City College of New York (CCNY) as the first New York City school to participate in its Academic Initiative program. The program offers colleges and universities a wide range of technology education materials and support. IBM works with schools that support open standards and want to use open source and IBM technologies for teaching.
CCNY is collaborating with IBM on several levels, including skills-building, curriculum development, and academic research and recruitment, as well as on a number of academic relational database studies and projects. IBM participated in City College's science, engineering and technology career fair in October as part of the company plan to hire more than 19,000 professionals in this year.
"We could not be more pleased," said Daniel McCracken, CCNY professor of CS. "IBM is giving us access to a full suite of the latest software tools for developing web-based applications and providing the training and support to help us successfully adopt them and keep our curriculum up to date. Some students are already working with these tools in their senior capstone design projects."
"We must help ensure that the students of today are prepared to be the technology leaders of tomorrow," said Johnny Barnes, IBM VP for Global IT Standards and Federal Solutions. For more information on the IBM Academic Initiative, visit www.ibm.com/university.
For more information on CCNY, visit www.ccny.cuny.edu.
ExxonMobil and SECME award math and science scholarships
Irving, TX - ExxonMobil and SECME, a pre-college technical education alliance, have named twenty-one high school seniors as 2004 ExxonMobil SECME scholars. The scholar program is designed to increase the number of minority students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math. Elements of the program include teacher training and the annual scholarships.
The students attended a four-day program at the 2004 SECME summer institute, held this year at the University of Houston, TX.
SECME began as an alliance of engineering deans and has expanded to include pre-college schools, businesses and government agencies in seventeen states, Washington, DC and Grand Bahamas.
"SECME strives to directly influence student success," said Dr Yvonne Freeman, exec director of SECME. "The scholarships are an important way to recognize these students for their hard work and encourage them to pursue careers in technical fields."
For more information about SECME and the SECME summer institute, visit www.secme.org.
D/C |
