studentspotlight SOARING TO THE TOP Samueli School students won first place at the 17th annual American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Foundation Design/ Build/Fly (DBF) competition in Arizona. “We expected to place in the top 10, given our preparation and effort,” says John Wei-Han Chen, senior engineering student and DBF project manager. “It definitely felt good to see all of our hard work coming together. We were extremely happy to win first place for UCI.” The national competition provides students an opportunity to design and build a radio-controlled aircraft to perform specific missions. This year’s design assignment was a simulation of a Joint Strike Fighter aircraft with three missions: speed/endurance, stealth and strike. UCI’s 31-person team spent eight months on design fabrication and flight testing, and they soared to victory over 80 other college teams.
30 Samueli School student engineering organizations A BROADCOM FOUNDATION RESEARCH FINALIST An electrical engineering and computer science graduate student was among 12 finalists from one dozen universities around the world competing in Broadcom Foundation’s University Research Competition. Sina Poorkasmaei worked with Chancellor’s Professor Hamid Jafarkhani on his project, which studied the technical challenges posed by improving the quality of information exchange between portable devices. The finalists were chosen by a select committee comprised of preeminent engineers. The competition is spearheaded by Broadcom’s co-founder, Henry Samueli, distinguished adjunct professor, and celebrates academic excellence and social awareness among students who perform extraordinary academic research.
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2013 Dean’s Report