Category Archives: Engineering

R&D Magazine’s 2006 Innovator of the Year

photo of Dean Kamen

R&D Magazine’s 2006 Innovator of the Year

Mega-inventor Dean Kamen has two simple goals: to improve children’s interest in science and technology, and to raise the standard of living for the world’s poor.

A self-taught physicist, with more than 150 patents, Kamen is obviously knowledgeable about what works in the world of science and technology.

Kamen’s latest endeavors involve bringing clean drinking water and cheap electricity to those who don’t have access to either. More than a billion people, or nearly 20% of the world’s population don’t have access to clean drinking water. And even more, 1.6 billion or about one out of every four people on this planet don’t have electricity. Continuing his emphasis on healthcare, Kamen points out that with clean water, you can eliminate more than 75% of those people’s health problems and diseases.

Prevoius post on Kamen’s work with electricity and drinking water for all. Kamen also founded FIRST (see previous post: 2006 FIRST Robotics Competition Regional Events).
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$75.3 Million for 5 New Engineering Research Centers

Claire Gmachl

Photo: Claire Gmachl, associate professor of electrical engineering at Princeton, the MIRTHE center director.

NSF Awards $75.3 Million for Five New Engineering Research Centers including the Mid-Infrared Technologies for Health and the Environment (MIRTHE):

The goal of the research is to produce devices that are so low in cost and easy to use that they transform aspects of the way doctors care for patients, local agencies monitor air quality, governments guard against attack and scientists understand the evolution of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
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will combine the work of about 40 faculty members, 30 graduate students and 30 undergraduates from the six universities. The center also is collaborating with dozens of industrial partners to turn the technology into commercial products, and is working with several educational outreach partners, which will use MIRTHE’s research as a vehicle for improving science and engineering education.

Fun k-12 Science and Engineering Learning

photo of robots

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education (CIPCE):

For too long now the nation’s best research universities have often sat idle while our the problems of our system of public school education have reached crisis proportion. Rensselaer, through CIPCE, intends to take the lead in forging new relationships which will become models for others to follow.

A bold declaration and vision which, thankfully, they back up with action.

CIPCE works closely with Rensselaer’s Academy of Electronic Media to develop K-12 interactive multimedia materials and to educate teachers in their use. We are interested in studying how cutting edge educational technologies can affect teaching and learning in the classroom.

They offer several Interactive MultiMedia downloads form their site. We have added a directory of sites that offer k-12 resources (ciriculum, tools, etc. for teachers) and interesting online and offline resources for sudents: science education sites as part of our science links directory.
Robotics for k-12 see: Continue reading →

Robots Sharing Talents

photo of robots

Robot team-mates tap into each others’ talents by Tom Simonite

Teams of robots that can remotely tap into each other’s sensors and computers in order to perform tricky tasks have been developed by researchers in Sweden. The robots can, for example, negotiate their way past awkward obstacles by relaying different viewpoints to one another.
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“Our system allows robots to start with a task, extract which capabilities are needed and find out where to access them,” Lundh explains. “If you don’t have the capabilities on your own you have to search for them.”

The number of cool research projects underway today is amazing.

Image: Tapping into another robot’s vision system could help a bot move a block around (from Robert Lundh)

What do Science and Engineering Graduates Do?

NSF surveyed Science and Engineering graduates and provide some not too surprising results in: What Do People Do After Earning an S&E.

Most graduates use the science and engineering knowledge (even if they went on to get unrelated post-graduate degrees in say business, law or no post graduate degree). It seems approximately 20% report having managerial positions currently (excepting recent graduates who are less likely to be managers).

About half never earned another degree after their S&E bachelor’s. Although less than a third of these S&E bachelor’s recipients worked in occupations formally defined as science and engineering, S&E knowledge remained important across a much wider set of occupations. Indeed, nearly two-thirds of S&E bachelor’s degree holders in non-S&E occupations reported that their field of degree was related to their job.

About half of S&E bachelor’s degree recipients go on to earn other degrees. However, fewer than one in five of all S&E bachelor’s recipients go on to earn advanced degrees in science and engineering.

Frankly I find this information less interesting than: the continuing high pay of engineering graduates and the fact that the top undergraduate degree for S&P 500 CEOs is Engineering. It would be interesting to see salary rates (with lifetime earnings), unemployment rates and career satisfaction by undergraduate degree (compared to other undergraduate degrees) throughout their careers (NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators – Workforce does include very interesting information along these lines).

Student Design Competition for Sustainability

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has opened the P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability. This competition provides grants to teams of college students to research, develop, and design solutions to challenges to sustainability. See the application and more information for details on eligibility and criteria.

Approximately 50 awards for Phase I; Approximately 10 awards for Phase II with approximately $1,250,000 total for all awards.
Up to $10,000 per Phase I grant for one year including direct and indirect costs. Proposals for Phase I grants with budgets exceeding $10,000 will not be considered. Upon the successful completion of Phase I, Phase I grant recipients will have the opportunity to apply for Phase II funding of up to $75,000 for one additional year including direct and indirect costs.

Applications are due by 21 December 2006.

Chinese Engineering Education Shortfalls

Short article on Chinese engineering education – Many engineering majors not qualified to work by Rachel Yan

Experts made the claim at the Symposium of Multi- and Inter-Disciplinary Engineering Education at East China University of Science and Technology yesterday.
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Among the country’s 23 million college students, about 8 million are studying engineering-related majors.
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“In many aspects, China can be proud of its engineering education,” said Tu Shandong, vice president of ECUST.

“But an increasing number of employers began to raise the embarrassing question that engineering majors lack professional knowledge and have poor communication or teamwork skills,” he said.

Only 14 percent of engineering graduates become qualified engineers in the field. Most graduates give up a career as an engineer and pursue work in other industries within nine years, according to the university’s research.

The topic of graduates that are not internationally competitive continues to be discussed in relation to the international engineering education data comparisons (also see: Engineering Education Worldwide). Continue reading →

Google Tech Webcasts

Google provides video webcasts of speakers (engineers, scientists, software programmers, professors…) that present at Google. These videos offer a great way to take part in one aspect of work at Googleplexs.

Recent additions include:

The rate at which they add excellent videos is amazing. You might find yourself wanting to work at Google.

Previous post: Google Tech Talks also see Google related posts on our management improvement blog

20 Scientists Who Have Helped Shape Our World

20 Scientists Who Have Helped Shape Our World (pdf document) from the National Science Resources Center

Norman Borlaug, Plant Scientist”–Father of the Green Revolution”
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The results of Dr. Borlaug’s work are encouraging: India, for example, harvests six times more wheat today than it did only 40 years ago. This increase in wheat production in poor countries has been called the “Green Revolution.” It has been written about Dr. Borlaug that he has saved more lives than anyone else who ever lived.

For his scientific achievements, Dr. Borlaug was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. Today, at age 90, Dr. Borlaug remains active in science as a distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M University

Others include:

  • Tim Berners-Lee, Computer Scientist—Inventor of the World Wide Web
  • George Washington Carver, Inventor/Chemist (1861−1943)—Saving Agriculture in the South
  • Ayanna Howard, Engineer—Robotics Pioneer, and

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    Science Opportunities for Students

    Girls in Science camping trip photo

    The Girls In Science blog documents a program for Roosevelt Middle School students in San Diego. It provides a great example of what can been done:

    Wow, what a year it’s been for our Girls In Science (GIS) program! In the span of one short school year, we met with 30 different presenters, covering topics from veterinary pathology to behavioral research to visual communication in primates to cytogenetics… We met sea lions, nearly extinct golden frogs, carnivorous plants, marsh birds, Mei Sheng the giant panda, Mexican gray wolves, and a black tarantula named Vivica. We dabbled in exotic animal nutrition, GPS mapping, and poop sampling. And we spent a glorious day at the La Brea Tar Pits learning about Southern California as it was during the last Ice Age!

    Virtually all of the scientists we met with were women, but we tossed a couple of males into the mix just for variety’s sake. One of them, Michael Puzzo, is a field biologist who tracks mountain lions throughout Southern California.

    Continue reading →