April 2016 Five10 Report

Congratulations to Paula Back '17 (civil engineering), Catherine Murray '18 (mechanical engineering), Makena Wong '17 (civil engineering), and David Kim '18 (mechanical engineering) who were selected as SCU Global Fellows for 2016. 

Kamak Ebadi, electrical engineering Ph.D. candidate in Robotics, Vision and Control, was invited by First Lady Michelle Obama to join the White House celebration of Nowrus, the traditional Iranian festival of spring. Ebadi serves as the co-chair and board member of PAAIA NexGen (Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans - NexGen).

Scott Hunter '16 (MS mechanical engineering) had an article, “Never Fear, Robots are Here,” published in Re/code, Mar. 20.

Avery Lu '95 (electrical engineering), co-founder and CMO of Palo Alto Scientific, Inc., was the featured presenter at the CIE Entrepreneur Forum Speaker Series April 25, addressing topics of interest to entrepreneurs and providing students with an opportunity to experience “the start up story” directly from an SCU alumnus.

SCU entrepreneurs Shane Rogers '13 (MS Engineering Management and Leadership) co-founder Hive Design, Casey (Kute) Schulz '08 (mechanical engineering) co-founder Preemadonna, and Taylor Alexander '07 (mechanical engineering) founder Flutter Wireless, shared their Kickstarter experiences at a Q&A Panel, April 27. Learn how the SoE fosters an entrepreneurial mindset here.

Ramesh Abhari (electrical engineering) and graduate students had papers accepted at the AP-S/URSI 2016: with Saumya Lal (MS '15) and Kavya Subramanya (MS '15), "Miniaturized EBG-Backed Textile Microstrip Patch Antenna for Bluetooth Wearable Sensor Applications;" with Ph.D. student Benjamin Horwath, "A 60 GHz 2x2 Planar Phased Array with SIW Modified Butler Matrix Feed."

Ahmed Amer (computer engineering) wrote an op-ed for Re/Code about cell phone privacy.

Updated requirements for strawbale walls resisting wind loads, developed by Mark Aschheim (civil engineering), were approved on April 23rd for inclusion in the 2018 International Residential Code, and are likely to be part of the 2019 California Building Code.

Bonita Banducci, gender competence specialist and engineering adjunct lecturer, received the Inspiration Award at the Powerful Women International Connections (PWIC) 5th Legacy Conference 2016, in San Francisco. Banducci is founder of the Global Women's Leadership Network, and consults with organizations from business, non-profit, academia, and government sectors.

Yi Fang (computer engineering) has a full paper: "Retrieving Non-Redundant Questions to Summarize a Product Review," accepted for publication by ACM SIGIR 2016. ACM SIGIR is the top conference on information retrieval with the acceptance rate of 18% this year. It will be held in Pisa, Italy, July 17-21.

Maryam Mobed-Miremadi and Prashanth Asuri (bioengineering) had "Trehalose effectiveness as a cryoprotectant in 2D and 3D cell cultures of human embryonic kidney cells” with bioengineering alumni Jared Hara '14, Jordan Tottori '14, Megan Anders '14, Smritee Dadhwal MS '15, accepted for publication in Artificial Cells, Nanomedicine, and Biotechnology.

Chris Kitts (mechanical engineering) received $65,000 from Intel Corporation supporting his "Implementation of Product and Technology Prototyping" and "Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Autopilot Development" projects. Robotics Systems Laboratory students will work with Intel personnel on a variety of new devices and will develop an autopilot capability exploiting the Intel Curie processor.

Guichun Li and Nam Ling (computer engineering), together with colleagues from Huwei/Hisilicon and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, were awarded a U.S. patent: "Reference pixel reduction for intra LM prediction," US patent #US9307237 B2, Apr. 5. They have also filed European and PCT patents for the invention.

Ed Maurer (civil engineering) was invited to share recent research on projected changes to the annual dry period in Central America at the American Association of Geographers’ annual meeting in San Francisco. Additionally, he contributed to an Earth Day column linking climate change action to faith traditions. Read it here.

Hisham Said (civil engineering) received a $29,880 contract from ELECTRI International to study the impacts of ill-managed design changes on the cost performance of developing reliable building information models (BIM) of electrical construction, and performing BIM-related tasks of engineering, automated jobsite layout, and prefabrication.

Marian Stetson-Rodriguez (engineering adjunct lecturer) brought the “Building Global Teams” ENGR 304 course to Singapore and Taiwan in April, with the SCU Executive Development Center. Over 85 participants came from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, and Hong Kong.

The School of Engineering lost a dear friend, respected academician, cherished mentor, and tireless supporter with the death of James Reites, S.J., April 15.  See our website for remembrances of the one and only Papa Reites, who by his example, taught us to live each day and give each day.

The Frugal Innovation Hub hosted 39 honors business students from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Mar. 23, to discuss how humanitarian technology and social entrepreneurship can provide a foundation for social change globally. Silvia Figueira (FIH director and computer engineering) presented on School of Engineering projects.

The Tiny House team has nearly finished designs for all house systems (electrical, mechanical, plumbing) and has finished trailer modifications to suit their 238 sq. ft. rEvolve House. Next they will begin laying out the subfloor to prepare for summer construction. “Like” them on Facebook to follow all the action.

Thank you for supporting the SoE! SCU's Day of Giving was a huge success for the School of Engineering; 241 donors gave more than $138,000 to advance undergraduate and graduate Engineering with a Mission.  If you missed the action, no worries. Give here: scu.edu/engineering/give