Engineers Without Borders:  Ben Mahony '21, Megan Sauter '20, David Gilbert '21, Katie Neighbors '21, and Garrett Nelson '20 spent 14 days in Rwanda last summer to begin the assessment work for a water project and continue work on an electric cart used to transport materials.  Laura Doyle and Tonya Nilsson (civil, environmental, and sustainable engineering) accompanied and advised the students.

Grace Hopper Conference: SCU computing female students attended the Grace Hopper Conference recently in Orlando, FL.  40 computer science and engineering graduate students and 40 undergraduates majoring in computer science and engineering, web design and engineering, and mathematics/computer science participated in the world’s largest gathering of women technologists. Thanks, Xilinx, for helping defray the cost of our undergraduates' travel.

Olivia Figueira '21 (computer science and engineering, minors in mathematics and economics) has been awarded a UPE/ACM Student Chapter Scholarship recognizing excellence and professional commitment to the computing and information technology field. Criteria for selection include academic record, faculty recommendations, and ACM chapter-related activities. Olivia serves as co-president of SCU's student chapter of ACM-W this year.

Rachael Han ’20 and Dr. Tonya Nilsson, (civil, environmental, and sustainable engineering), have been awarded a $2000 Hackworth Grant for their project developing a guide to engineering for non-local communities. The grant will be used for student wages and incidentals related to the research project.

IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference: 38 SCU students and 12 faculty from both School of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences presented 12 papers at IEEE GHTC October 17-20 in Seattle! GHTC is an international flagship conference, focused on the application of technology to address critical issues for the benefit of the world's resource-constrained and vulnerable populations.

Ph.D. student Ali Khoshniat (electrical and computer engineering) won 1st place in the IEEE EMC Student Hardware Design Contest held at the 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Signal and Power Integrity in July. Ali is advised by Ramesh Abhari.

Ann McGuire and Rachel Stolzman (Robotics Systems Lab) led the design, integration and delivery of several deep sea water sampling systems to scientific collaborators participating in a $6M deployment in the Pacific Ocean as part of the International Ocean Drilling Program. The samplers use a novel shape memory alloy trigger design to reliably sample water in the 140-200 degrees C range, an environment in which control electronics will melt.

In June, our dear friend and colleague Mark Aschheim, Professor in Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering, passed away after a two-year battle with cancer. Department Chair Edwin Maurer shared a remembrance of Mark at a memorial gathering in October. Find it and information on contributing to the Mark Aschheim Memorial Award here.

Congratulations to our engineering faculty recently recognized for outstanding contributions to SCU in teaching, research, and service. Christopher Kitts received the University Award for Recent Achievement in Scholarship. Katie Wilson, Prashanth Asuri, Tonya Nilsson, Ruth Davis, and Sally Wood were honored for their contributions as STEM leaders, and Weijia Shang received a shout-out for 25 Years of Service. Read more.

Prashanth Asuri (bioengineering, bioinnovation and design lab) has been appointed to serve on the Governing Committee of The National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), and represent SCU as well as the interests of other Tier 2 academic/non-profit members. NIIMBL is a public-private consortium advancing innovation in biopharmaceutical manufacturing.

Drazen Fabris (mechanical engineering), Robert Kleinhenz (applied mathematics), and Maria Pantoja (CalPoly) won the best paper award in the Bio-Inspired Processing track for "Adding Probabilistic Certainty to Improve Performance of Convolutional Neural Networks,” presented at the Latin American High Performance Computing Conference (CARLA2019) held Sept. 25-27 at the University of Costa Rica, Turrialba, CR.

Silvia Figueira (Frugal Innovation Hub) is featured in ASEE's Award Winning Docu-Short, Design for the Down & Out, for her Mobile Computing Lab's work developing mobile apps to help the homeless (find her at the 3:31 mark). The video explores problems people in the homeless community face and how engineers have both contributed to those problems and what they are doing to create solutions.

Chris Kitts (Robotics Systems Lab, mechanical engineering), Ignacio Mas, Ph.D. '11, and Thomas Adamek '13 (Engineers Degree) received a patent on their Multi-Robot Gradient Based Adaptive Navigation System, which is being developed for applications ranging from environmental monitoring to disaster response.

Hohyun Lee (mechanical engineering) and Yuhong Liu (computer science and engineering), co-PIs, have received a $40,000 award from NIST for their project to develop a learning model to determine occupancy information in a residential building from multiple economic sensors with the goal of minimizing unnecessary operation of building energy systems.

Edwin Maurer has been named chair of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Sustainable Engineering, to serve for a period of three years starting on July 1, 2019 through August 31, 2022. Dr. Maurer replaces Reynaud Serrette  who served as department chair for the past year. 

On Shun Pak (mechanical engineering) received a $251K National Science Foundation (NSF) award as Principal Investigator to study propulsion of synthetic swimmers in complex (non-Newtonian) fluids. This research shows great promise in biomedical applications including drug delivery and microsurgery.

Vlad Patryshev (adjunct lecturer, computer science and engineering) has a book published: A Brief Course in Modern Math for Programmers, Icpress. Find it here.

Taru Kanchan MS '18, Minqiang Jiang Ph.D. '06, and Nam Ling (all computer science and engineering), won an Excellent Paper Award for their paper, "Non-MPM Mode Coding for Intra Prediction in Video Coding," at the 12th International Conference on Ubi-Media Computing and Workshops, held in Bali, Indonesia.

Congratulations Yevgeniy Spektor '11, M.S. '12 (electrical engineering, mathematics), CTO of T4: His company was one of the youngest and smallest selected to compete in TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield (acceptance rate 2.6%!). T4 has created the fastest and most complete way to find market research by aggregating all paid and free sources into one simple search platform. At the event, T4 announced the launch of their public beta. Check it out.

Jack Holmes studied engineering at SCU 1949-52 on a basketball scholarship. He went on to work for FMC and later Kwik Lok Corp., where he was Chief Engineer for 26 years. There, he designed equipment improvements and plastic closures. To this day, you see his work on bread bags and other applications! The 91-year-old is in good health, enjoying life in Boise, ID.

Gene Ravizza '50, 1928-2019. The School of Engineering lost a treasure with the passing of Gene Ravizza earlier this month. A member of the legendary Class of '50, Gene was a stalwart supporter of the School who embodied the values of conscience, competence, and compassion SCU strives to advance. Donations in remembrance of Gene may be made to SCU's Dean's Engineering Excellence Fund. Read about Gene's life here. 

Help us find our super-engineers! Nominate candidates (yourself, included!) for the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (see past winners). The highest honor bestowed by the School, the DEA Award recognizes graduates whose accomplishments in their professions, communities, and/or University service have set them apart. Find criteria and nomination form here.

What's new? We would love to share news of your accolades, accomplishments, achievements, awards. Or if you have an interesting story to tell, we want to hear that, too. Send your news to Heidi Williams: hwilliams@scu.edu.

Big Bash! More than 350 alumni, faculty, and friends attended the School of Engineering's Big Bash Block Party during Grand Reunion Weekend earlier this month. Celebrants enjoyed food, music, games, and fellowship in the School's new "neighborhood," the Heafey-Bergin engineering complex. Mark your calendar for next year's signature event, Saturday, October 10, 2020!

BioInnovation and Design Lab has received a $35,000 award from Varian Medical Systems, Inc., supporting student efforts to develop machine learning algorithms to characterize medical images for radiotherapy treatment and conduct market research studies in support of strategic decision making around software licensing models. More about the Lab here.

Robotics Systems Laboratory: Faculty, staff and students from the Robotics Systems Lab continued their 20 years of work on the robotic exploration of Lake Tahoe with science partners from the US Geological Survey and the University of Nevada, Reno, conducting a 3-day geological survey in August. They performed similar work for the first time in Fallen Leaf Lake, west of Lake Tahoe.

SCU, the School of Engineering, and College of Arts and Sciences celebrated the "Topping Off" of the Sobrato Campus for Discovery and Innovation Sept. 24! The SCU community came together to sign the highest beam of the new building and watched as it was lifted into place. The STEM complex is slated to open in Fall 2021.

Fall edition of Engineering News is available now. Read about some of our undergraduate summer researchers, faculty research, a Ph.D. candidate's work that is being put to the test in an international competition, Q&A with alumna Senior Vice President and CTO of Gap, Inc., and more. Find it all here.