Faculty News n Mechanical Engineering and Short-Range Radar System OpenSource Developments for a University RF/Microwave Systems Laboratory Class” at the ASEE Pacific Southwest Annual Meeting. Derickson and lecturer David Retz presented “Empowering Non-Engineers with a ‘Microcontrollers for Everyone’ Philosophy” at the ASEE Annual Meeting. At the same meeting, Derickson, Marcel Stieber (B.S./M.S., Electrical Engineering, 2012) and student Stanton Wu presented “First-Year Amateur Radio Licensing for Electrical Engineering Students.” Fred DePiero, Bridget Benson and lecturer Clay McKell presented “CATE: A Circuit Analysis Tool for Education” at the ASEE Annual Conference in New Orleans. Xiao-Hua (Helen) Yu chaired a session and presented a paper on “Image Registration With Artificial Neural Networks Using Spatial and Frequency Features” at the IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Vancouver, Canada.
n Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Dan Waldorf, chair, and lecturer Trian Georgeou presented “Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) Integration throughout a Manufacturing Engineering Curriculum” at the ASEE Annual Conference. Tali Freed and co-authors, including electrical engineering student Christopher Gerdom, presented innovative radio-frequency identification (RFID) research at the IEEE International Conference on RFID Technology and Applications in Tokyo. The presentation can be viewed at https://youtu.be/ mM4S-wDrvYI. Freed also led a group of 12 students to the RFID Journal Live conference in Orlando, Fla. This was the 10th time that Cal Poly students participated in this annual conference, learned about RFID and the Internet of Things industries, and developed connections that assisted them in finding jobs and internships. Xuan Wang received a summer fellowship from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
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CAL POLY ENGINEERING
Mason Medizade helped develop and launch a new curricular program on nuclear and carbon-neutral renewable energy systems. (See page 6) Steffen Peuker, the James L. Bartlett Jr. Professor, gave workshops related to his research to enhance freshman engineering student success at the ASEE Annual Conference, the First Year Engineering Experience Conference at Ohio State University and the ASEE Pacific Southwest Conference. Peuker was also selected to attend the CSU Institute for Teaching and Learning Summer Institute on “What Works: Designing Teaching for Diverse Learners” in Long Beach, Calif. Peter Schuster and James Widmann received the Best Paper Award at the ASEE Annual Conference for “All Active All the Time? What are the Implications of Teaching a Traditional Content-Rich Machine Components/Mechanical Systems Design Course Using Active Learning?” Brian Self and James Widmann presented “Increasing Conceptual Understanding and Student Motivation in Undergraduate Dynamics Using InquiryBased Learning Activities” at the ASEE Annual Conference. Self and Widmann also co-authored “Misconceptions in Rolling Dynamics: A Case Study of an Inquiry-based Learning Activity,” presented at the ASEE Annual Conference. James Widmann, John Chen and Brian Self received a $479,00 National Science Foundation grant for “Collaborative Research: The Role of Non-Cognitive and Affective (NCA) Factors in Engineering and Computing Student Academic Performance.” Mohammad Noori co-authored “Fatigue Reliability Assessment of Welded Steel Bridge Decks under Stochastic Truck Loads via Machine Learning” in the American Society of Civil Engineers Journal of Bridge Engineering (published online at DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)BE.19435592.0000982). He also co-authored “A Machine-learning Approach for Structural Damage Detection Using Least Square Support Vector Machine Based on a New Combinational Kernel Function” in the International Journal of Structural Health Monitoring (2016, Vol. 15930, pp. 302-316). Noori served as a member of a
Eltahry Elghandour
Amelia Greig
Ben Hawkins
Mechanical Engineering
Aerospace Engineering
Biomedical Engineering & Electrical Engineering
Sthanu Mahadev
Maria Pantoja
Mechanical Engineering
Computer Science & Software Engineering
College Welcomes New Faculty
F
ive professors joined the college this fall to teach and conduct research in areas of strategic importance: In Aerospace Engineering, Amelia Greig will contribute to Cal Poly’s internationally known CubeSat Program. She earned her doctorate at the Australian National University and has research interests in plasma propulsion, micropropulsion for CubeSats and applied plasma physics. Greig teaches courses in spacecraft propulsion and space environments. “I am excited to be joining Cal Poly due to the excellent reputation of its students,” she said. “Not only are they some of the best, but they are all so eager!” Biomedical Engineering has added Benjamin Hawkins, who looks forward to working on multidisciplinary student and faculty projects. With a doctorate from Cornell University, Hawkins teaches electricity and magnetism, mass and heat transport, circuits and design. He conducts research in microfluidics, electrokinetics and biomedical devices. With a doctorate from Santa Clara University, Maria Pantoja joins the Computer Science and Software Engineering Department as an expert in parallel programming, computer architecture and operating systems. She strengthens Cal Poly’s growth in high-performance computing. “Parallel implementation is revolutionizing scientific fields, including data science, computer graphics, computer
dissertation exam committee for the University of Malaya and on the international review team for the Award for Research Excellence Program of the Abu Dhabi Education Council. He presented the following papers: “A Wavelet-energy Based Damage Identification Method for Steel Bridges” at the International
vision, robotics, medical imaging, security systems and scientific computation,” said Pantoja. “There is an emerging, urgent need to train parallel programmers so they can face the vast changes ahead.” Mechanical Engineering added Sthandu Mahadev and Elthary Elghandour. With a strong hands-on experience in composite manufacturing/processing techniques, Mahadev adds to the new manufacturing focus in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He will equip more students to incorporate manufacturing concerns into product and component design decisions. Cal Poly’s Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) may also benefit from Mahadev’s expertise: He served as the SAE racecar design and manufacturing lead while earning his master’s and doctorate at the University of Texas at Arlington. No stranger to Cal Poly, Elghandour has taught as a lecturer on campus since 1993 in Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering. Like Mahadev, Elghandour has expertise in composite materials — his research interests include examining the mechanical behavior of sustainable materials, stress analysis of composites, and experimental and numerical analysis of structural dynamics. Elghandour earned his doctorate through a joint program between Cal Poly and Helwan University in Cairo. n
Conference on Smart Infrastructure and Construction in Cambridge, United Kingdom; and “A Modified Wavelet Energy Rate Based Damage Identification Method for Steel Bridges Subject to Seismic Loads” at the 5th International Conference on Integrity-Reliability-Failure in Porto, Portugal. n