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NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts scholarship winners
Washington, DC - Each year the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) awards five $9,000 undergraduate fellowships to support original research in aerospace. NIAC was created in 1998 to "solicit revolutionary concepts from people and organizations outside NASA" and to provide an independent source of new aeronautical and space systems for NASA missions. NIAC asks fellowship applicants for ideas that push the limits of current science and technology.
The fellowship is intended to foster mentoring, networking and creativity, as well as give students practical experience as project managers. Fellows can use the funds as needed for concept development. The only requirement is that they must use some of the money for travel and hotel expenses for themselves and their mentors to attend two NIAC meetings, one in October and the other in March. "We have learned that the prize-winners gain a great deal by interacting with leaders in the NIAC community," says Dr Diana Jennings, NIAC associate director. Jennings manages the Student Fellows program. "These are merit-based awards. We maintain active contacts with HBCUs, using those connections to get the word out about our fellowship opportunities."
2006 awardees and their projects:
Daniella Della-Guistina, University of Arizona, "The Martian Bus Schedule: An Innovative Technique for Protecting Humans on a Journey to Mars."
J. Michael Burgess, University of Alabama-Huntsville, "Advanced Grazing Incidence Neutron Imaging System."
Jonathan Sharma, Georgia Institute of Technology, "START: Utilizing Near-Earth Asteroids with Tether Technologies."
Floris van Breugel, Cornell University, "Evolution of a Scalable, Hovering Flapping Robot."
Rigel Woida, University of Arizona, "The Road to Mars."
The next call for NIAC Student Fellows Program proposals will be released in early 2007 for awards in the 2007/2008 academic year. Check www.niac.usra.edu.
New coalition to administer NASA scholarship fund
Washington, DC - The Hispanic College Fund (HCF), the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corp (UNCFSP) are now administering NASA's Motivating Undergraduates in Science and Technology (MUST) program. MUST gives scholarships and internships to undergraduate students pursuing degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The program will last three years and award $1.75 million in scholarship funds.
MUST supports approximately one hundred undergraduate students with one-year scholarships of up to 50 percent of tuition, not to exceed $10,000, and a paid internship in a relevant field. The program is open to all, though it is focused on students from underserved and underrepresented groups. Applicants must be rising college freshmen, sophomores or juniors and U.S. citizens, have a minimum cumulative grade average of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale, and be pursuing a full-time undergraduate degree in a STEM discipline. Check consortium member websites, www.hispanic fund.org, www. shpe.org or www.uncfsp.org, in January 2007 for applications for 2007/2008 scholarships.
ConstructMyFuture scholarships
Milwaukee, WI - ConstructMyFuture.com provides students, teachers, counselors and parents with Internet-based resources highlighting careers in the construction industry. The organization also offers college and university scholarships. This year's winners included Michele Mohon, who will use her award to help her on her way to a CE degree at the University of Texas-Austin.
The application deadline for 2007 scholarships is February 5, 2007. For information see www.constructmyfuture.com/stu-scholarships.html.
Grove School of Engineering inaugurated
New York, NY - In September the City College of New York (CCNY) formally inaugurated the College's Grove School of Engineering. City University of New York named CCNY's school of engineering for Dr Andrew Grove in November 2005 after he gave a $26 million gift to the college, the largest in its 160-year history.
Grove was the co-founder of Intel Corp (Santa Clara, CA) and its chairman and CEO for many years. He graduated from the CCNY School of Engineering at the top of the class of 1960, four years after leaving his native Hungary.
In his address at the event Grove said the United States could meet two of its greatest challenges, healthcare costs and energy independence, by encouraging development of "disruptive technologies." Disruptive technologies, Grove explained, are new ways of doing things that are dismissed by existing practitioners, but eventually take over all or most of a market. The personal computer was such a technology, eventually replacing most mainframe computers.
To address healthcare costs, treatment needs to be shifted from inconvenient and expensive facilities such as emergency rooms and nursing homes to more accessible and lower-cost facilities like in-store retail clinics that "provide very low-cost generic services for a reasonable fee," Grove said. In the energy arena he suggested that engineers address improved methods for cleaning, capturing, storing and transmitting the energy produced by coal, improving the economies of scale for nuclear energy, and increasing the energy yield of agri-fuels.
Founded in 1853, the Grove School is the only public engineering school in New York City. It offers bachelors, masters and PhD degrees in seven fields: biomedical, chemical, civil, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering and computer science. The school ranks among the most diverse in the country and keeps tuition and fees low to provide access to the largest possible number of students.
Student robots are good sports at FIRST Robotics championships
Atlanta, GA - Student teams from New York City, NY; Sterling Heights, MI; and Montreal, Canada won top honors at the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) national championship in April. This year's challenge was to create a robot that could play a robot ball game, firing foam balls through hoops and plowing them into floor goals, using a vision system for navigation.
Sharing top honors were the ThunderChickens of Utica Community Schools in Sterling Heights, the Northern Knights of Loyola High School in Montreal, and the RoboWizards of McKee Vocational High School in Staten Island, NY.
FIRST was founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, to inspire young people's interest and participation in science and technology. In the FIRST Robotics competition high-school students work with mentors from business and the community to design and develop sophisticated robots.
This year's emphasis on sports was deliberate, Kamen said. "Our society is in the middle of a crisis in science and technology, and FIRST is trying to change how our culture views these fields. We're helping young people see scientists and engineers in the same light as their traditional heroes in sports and entertainment."
FIRST organizes two other robotics exercises. One is the FIRST Lego League, where teams of nine to fourteen year olds use robotics and Legos to explore nanotechnology. The FIRST VEX Challenge (FVC), which debuted in the 2005-2006 school year, challenges students to use the VEX Robotics starter kit to design and build a robot. For more information on all the FIRST Robotics programs, go to www.usfirst.org.
Tech groups respond to Nat'l Academy of Sciences report on gender bias
Washington, DC - In September the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." The report concludes that there are no inherent inequalities between the abilities of men and women in the sciences, but bias and outmoded academic practices have impeded women's progress.
For America's women engineers and the societies, organizations and programs that work with them, this wasn't new information. MentorNet, SWE and Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network (WEPAN) all have programs to encourage and support women in science and technology. All had strong reactions to the NAS report.
MentorNet and the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) work together to connect undergraduate and graduate students, post docs and early career faculty with experienced academics and professionals for e-mentoring. They, along with many other groups, have strengthened their programs in response to the report. "AWIS has long recognized and fostered the importance of mentoring," notes Donna J. Dean, AWIS president. "Partnerships with organizations like AWIS enable our online mentoring network to expand its reach and impact," says Carol Muller, founder and CEO of MentorNet WEPAN works with programs that support women technical students. "Women's progress in a number of science and engineering fields remains stubbornly slow," says C. Diane Matt, executive director of WEPAN.
Jude Garzolini, president of SWE, says, "SWE has long been concerned with this issue, and for the past five years has released a comprehensive annual review detailing the status of women engineers in industry and academia."
These groups are among the more than seventy-five engineering, professional and technical societies that support Engineers Week. The eWeek organization also responded to the report, pointing out that it cultivates future female techies during the five-year-old "introduce a girl to engineering" day.
For more information on these mentoring programs go to www.MentorNet.net, www.swe.org, www.wepan.org or www.eweek.org. The report can be purchased from the NAS through national-academies.org.
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