June 2017 Five10 Report

Bioengineering seniors Andrew Schmidt, Matthew Fitzgerald, and Nina Morrison won the Grand Prize of $5,000 for their pitch at the annual Donald L. Lucas Business Pitch Competition. Under the guidance of Prashanth Asuri (bioengineering), they proposed the development of Brain Buddy, a mobile app that assists athletes, coaches, and doctors with the treatment of sports-related concussions.

Civil engineering juniors participated in National River Cleanup Day, May 20, by pulling 240 pounds of debris from a one-mile stretch of the San Tomas Aquino Creek in Santa Clara. This annual service project is spearheaded by civil engineering professor Edwin Maurer.

Civil Engineering students made presentations at the 2017 California Straw Building Association Conference in Petaluma, CA. Meg Ackerson and Kenna Williams presented their senior project, "Effect of Mesh Type and Wall Slenderness on Strawbale Wall Seismic Capacity." Jack Dinkelspiel, JJ Galvin, and Martin Prado presented "The rEvolve Tiny House."

Engineers Without Borders: SCU EWB students are fundraising to support their travel to Nyange, Rwanda, for an assessment trip this summer. They will be checking on previously implemented projects and collecting data to start a new project during the 2017-18 academic year.

Kayden Haleakala MS '16 (civil engineering) presented a paper and poster, "Assessing climate change impacts on water supply reliability for Santa Clara County, California," at the ASCE World Environmental & Water Resources Congress (EWRI), May 24 in Sacramento, CA.

PhD student Guichun Li '13 and Professor Nam Ling (both computer engineering) with researchers from Huawei/Hisilicon were awarded another U.S. patent, "Mode Dependent Intra Smoothing Filter Table Mapping Methods for Non-Square Prediction Units," Mar. 21.

rEvolve Tiny House team was named SCU's Sustainability Champion of Innovation! Among other reasons, the team won for their collaboration "over two years to design and [build] a net-zero energy house by incorporating renewable energy, green building techniques, and sustainable living." More.

Erik Risa '17 (bioengineering) was named this year's Nobili Medal recipient. The Nobili Medal, presented at Commencement, is awarded to the male graduate judged outstanding in academic performance, personal character, school activities, and constructive contribution to the University.

Nate Tucker '16 MS '17 (electrical engineering) was accepted for the Ph.D. program with full support at UC Santa Barbara. Nate graduated as the top ELEN student in 2016.

Congratulations to our SoE faculty: Prashanth Asuri (bioengineering), tenure and promotion to associate professor; Sarah Kate Wilson (electrical engineering), promotion to full professor; Christopher Kitts (mechanical engineering) William and Janice Terry Endowed Professorship; Alfonso Ortega (mechanical engineering) John A. Sobrato Endowed Professorship.

Nam Ling (computer engineering) was named a member of the external advisory board for San Jose State University's Department of Computer Science (SJSU CS). 

Jonathan Zhang (bioengineering) accepted a $50,000 gift-in-donation from Genentech Inc. The instrument will be used for bioengineering lab teaching and research.

A big THANK YOU to the 100+ School of Engineering alumni who served as team mentors or judges at this year's Senior Design Conference! Our students are enriched by your guidance and participation. Find a list of the session winners here.

SCUBBA: Join the Santa Clara University Bronco Builders Association on a guided tour of the SCU campus, showcasing new construction and future building plans. June 22, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Information and registration here.

The 2017 State of the School Address is available online now. Dean Godfrey Mungal's presentation includes not only an update on what has transpired over the past year, but also a look at the past 10 years and trends for the future. Find the presentation here.

Krzysztof Izdebski, bioengineering advisory board member and founder and Chairman of Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation, was featured in Inside Science's YouTube video, "Heavy Metal Singers are Just Big Babies." His research uncovers how these performers are able to scream for hours without damaging their vocal folds, an ability babies are born with, but mostly lose over time. Watch the video here.

The Robotic Systems Laboratory was notified that the NASA EcAMSat spacecraft has been manifested for launch into space in September 2017. RSL will be controlling this satellite from the SCU Satellite Mission Control Center. SCU is the only academic institution in the US that is contracted to perform all mission control activities for a federal spacecraft using student operations teams.