E-Week 2013 proved a rousing success as students burst hot dogs into flames, built bridges with Popsicle sticks and dropped eggs five stories.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized Timothy Rupert with a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award.

UC Irvine senior engineering student Sean Burke and UCI alumnus Jorge Zamora ’09 took third prize in Google’s recent Youtube Hackathon in Los Angeles.

Despite gray clouds and cool weather, more than 200 students turned out Tuesday morning for a free breakfast to kick off National Engineers Week, or E-Week. Engineering professors joined the Samueli School’s Dean Gregory Washington to cook and serve up pancakes, of all shapes and sizes, to a line of hungry students.

“I encourage everyone to come out and enjoy the week of activities, and learn something new about engineering,” said Dean Washington. “I just learned from Albert Yee (professor and department chair of chemical engineering and materials science) that there is a ‘right’ way, scientifically, to mix pancakes.”

E-Week is an annual event aimed at increasing public awareness and appreciation for the engineering profession. Established in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the weeklong celebration provides an avenue for students to demonstrate inventiveness and imagination through a variety of events.

read more

“We need a hand-to-hand movement,” said Calvin Mackie about the need to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The former engineering professor turned motivational speaker, mentor and technology entrepreneur spoke to UCI students, staff and administrators who gathered at the Calit2 Building Auditorium. The event was sponsored by The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and the UCI Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs.

“We’ve figured out how to scour the city to find those in brown and black communities to play football, basketball and baseball. Why can’t we do it for STEM?” asked Mackie. “If we keep believing there is an archetype STEM student, we’re not going to reach the underrepresented minorities that we need, that will help us compete on a global scale.”

read more

Researchers will explore use of marine conditions to produce clean energy

The W.M. Keck Foundation has granted $1 million to UC Irvine to build a campus laboratory in which researchers can explore the potential of using the deep ocean’s low-temperature and high-pressure conditions to generate carbon-free power from methane hydrates.

Three-dimensional, ice-like structures with natural gas locked inside, methane hydrates are found under the Arctic permafrost and in ocean sediments along nearly every continental shelf in the world. They’re difficult to recover, though, because they require low temperatures and high pressure to remain solid. The new laboratory will investigate novel strategies for utilizing the natural gas contained in methane hydrates through high-pressure combustion and for immediately capturing and mitigating any carbon dioxide emissions.

“This will be the only facility in the world capable of examining both high-pressure combustion and carbon sequestration,” said Derek Dunn-Rankin, professor and chair of mechanical & aerospace engineering and lead investigator on the project.

read more

The UC Irvine Tau Beta Pi Chapter, which has around 300 total members, has initiated 41 new members. Tau Beta Pi is a national honor society open to all engineering disciplines and is the oldest and largest honor society at the Samueli School.

Students must complete an initiation process by meeting a set of requirements and demonstrating commitment to the organization before becoming official members.  An initiate must be in the top 8 percent of their junior class or top 5 percent of their senior class, and display exemplary character and integrity.

read more

Universities that help graduate students offset the rising costs of earning an advanced degree are better positioned to recruit top talent. And with several years of tuition increases and state funding decreases, graduate schools are looking to corporate partners for support. The Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) is pleased to announce that Broadcom Foundation has pledged such assistance in the form of graduate fellowships. 

Broadcom Foundation will contribute $400,000 over two years to establish graduate fellowships at the Samueli School. The gift will fund four electrical engineering graduate students each year for the next two years.

read more

Ahmad Falahatpisheh has been awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association. Falahatpisheh works on computational and experimental cardiac fluid dynamics. His project involves modeling the flow inside the heart of patients with a complex congenital heart malformation called tetralogy of Fallot.

Kenneth Mease has received a seed grant of $50,160 from NASA. The grant will fund Mease’s research project titled Strategic Air Traffic Flow Control via Aggregate Modeling.

Ali Mohraz has received a Distinguished Young Rheologist award from TA Instruments, a manufacturer of analytical instruments for thermal analysis, rheology, and microcalorimetry. The award is an instrument grant, in the form of a $50,000 rheometer (a device that measures the way flows respond to applied forces).

read more

Seven engineering students spent their summer putting what they’d learned in the classroom to good use on a project for the Free Wheelchair Mission (FWM).

A few days before the Thanksgiving holiday, Samueli School Dean Gregory Washington was giving thanks to Harut Barsamian at a gathering of his family, friends and colleagues.

As an undergraduate electrical engineering student at the prestigious Zhejiang University in China, Jiawen Li found her passion for research was propelled by the death of her beloved grandfather.

Symposium features innovative faculty

Assistant Professor Amir AghaKouchak, department of civil and environmental engineering, was one of 72 innovative educators who participated in the National Academy of Engineering's fourth Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) symposium. The attendees were nominated by fellow engineers or deans and chosen from a highly competitive pool of applicants. The symposium was held Oct. 14-17 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering in Irvine.

The FOEE program brings together some of the nation’s most engaged and innovative engineering educators to recognize, reward and promote effective, substantive and inspirational engineering education.

Read More

Six students who participated in this year’s St. Margaret’s Episcopal High School Summer Internship Program at the Samueli School presented their research projects in early November to their parents, teachers and the engineering faculty and graduate students who mentored them.

Communications and Information Technology 2025 Conference Explored Future of Industry
 

Vasan Venugopalan receives grant to create program

“World’s Lightest Material” wins Breakthrough Award

RapidTech trains tomorrow’s workforce in advanced manufacturing technologies like 3-D printing

Biomedical engineer Elliot Botvinick uses optical tweezers to understand how disease takes hold

BME faculty member wins one of 51 awards nationally