Tag: mechanical engineering

Yakacki and team receives Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Initiative funding

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn Faculty, NewsLeave a comment
Christopher Yakacki
left to right: Yakacki, Carpenter, Jenkins; not pictured: Yu, Poddar

Christopher Yakacki, associate professor of mechanical engineering, along with mechanical engineering associate professor Dana Carpenter, professor Peter Jenkins, assistant professor Kai Yu, and Dr. Sourav Poddar from CU sports medicine, are leading one of seven research projects selected for funding by the Pac-12 Student-Athlete Health and Well-Being Initiative’s grant program for the 2019-20 year.

Their project, Head Trauma: Designing Safer Helmets Using Advanced Materials and Modeling, seeks to leverage this state-of-the-art technology and create new models to improve football helmet safety using a recently developed high-performance polymer called liquid-crystal elastomers (LCEs). The goal is to lower the severity of impacts and reduce the prevalence of concussions in the sport.

Congratulations!

Read the Pac-12 press release.

Engineering students shine at 22nd annual Research and Creative Activities Symposium

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn News, StudentsLeave a comment

On Friday, April 26, students from across the college participated in the 22nd annual Research and Creative Activities Symposium. Our students won awards in the technology, engineering and mathematics category, as well as the biomedical sciences category. A list of award winning students and their projects are below.

Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics:

1st place:
Samantha Butler, College of Engineering, Design and Computing
Mentor: Chao Liu, assistant professor of electrical engineering
“Automatic Classification of Calcifications and Masses in Breast Mammograms Using Deep Neural Networks”

3rd place:
Team HyperLynx: Andrew Gras, Wencil Stanek, Aaron Zapiler, Bejan Akhaven, Omran Haghegh, Jong Shin, College of Engineering, Design and Computing
Mentor: Satadru Dey, assistant professor of electrical engineering
“HyperLynx”

Biomedical Sciences:

3rd place (tie):
Anne Lyons, College of Engineering, Design and Computing
Mentor: Jeffrey Jacot, associate professor of bioengineering
“Optimizing Electrospun Cardiac Patches for Prevascularization Using Polymer Composites”

Honorable Mentions (tie):
Joseph Massey, College of Engineering, Design and Computing
Co-Authors: Alyssa Salazar, Krishna Kumar, Sean Reilley
Mentor: Craig Lanning, bioengineering instructor
“A Device for Individuals with Quadriplegia to Independently Control Their Beds’ Orientation to Prevent Decubitus Ulcers and Alleviate Pain”

Congratulations to these students and mentors as well as everyone who participated in this event.

An exciting time for engineering at CU Denver

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn Events, NewsLeave a comment

Dean Martin Dunn presented the college’s new strategic vision and name at a faculty/staff celebration on February 28, setting the trajectory for the exciting things to come for the newly renamed College of Engineering, Design and Computing.

On March 6, the college and Office of Advancement kicked off the fundraising campaign for the new building at an intimate event held at CU Denver CityCenter.

All in all, it’s a very exciting time for the college, and these advancements were covered in the Denver Post and CU Denver Today. Both pieces paint an accurate picture of the exciting things to come.

Read the Denver Post story.
Read the CU Denver Today story.

Engineering students advance to the 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn News, Students, UndergraduatesLeave a comment

Team HyperLynx, comprised of 18 students from mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, has advanced the the final stage of the 2019 SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, scheduled for July 21, 2019 at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Cali. CU Denver is the only Colorado school to advance to the final stage of the competition, and will compete against schools including Delft University of Technology and MIT. A complete list of competitors is available at www.spacex.com/hyperloop.

Hyperlynx began designing their pod more than a year ago, a process that’s included refining, redesigning, and basically starting over from scratch. The end result is a simplified, less expensive, lighter, faster pod.

Leading up to this, the team completed internal preliminary design reviews followed by critical design reviews.  They sought out subject-matter-experts from around the world with the goal of doing everything possible to learn the true scope of the project. In January, the team participated in a final design briefing with SpaceX and Boring Company engineers, which was the final hurdle to making the top 20.

The team will spend the next few months fabricating and building the pod, ensuring it’s in top shape for the late-July event.

Learn more about Team HyperLynx by visiting www.denverhyperlynx.com.

Support the team by clicking here.

Nearly 275 students attend largest Engineering Internship and Job Fair

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn News, StudentsLeave a comment

On Tuesday, November 6, nearly 275 students attended the CU Denver Engineering Internship and Job Fair in the Tivoli Turnhalle. This year’s job fair was the largest to-date, with 39 employers attending. And based on participant feedback, the event was a success.

  • Employers collected more than 649 resumes
  • 90% of employers reported they agree or strongly agree that the quality of candidates was good
  • 99% of students who responded to our exit survey said they felt that this event helped them feel prepared for their “next steps” in their professional development

In addition to the Career Center and the Experiential Learning Center, members from the Society of Women Engineers, Tau Beta Pi, Women in Computer Science and Association of Computing Machinery sat on the planning committee for this event.

Faculty receive $4.5M DARPA grant for Subterranean Challenge

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn Faculty, NewsLeave a comment

Researchers from CU Denver, CU Boulder and Boston-based Scientific Systems Company have partnered to design drones that can explore underground environments like subway tunnels, mines and caves.

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded the team a $4.5 million grant to support its participation in its national Subterranean Challenge, which will end in fall 2021. The partners will compete against five other funded teams across the country to complete three increasingly difficult underground challenges.

The CU Denver team includes Ron Rorrer, associate professor of mechanical engineering, Mark Golkowski and Jaedo Park, associate professors of electrical engineering, Chao Liu and Vijay Harid, assistant professors of electrical engineering, and Diane Williams, research associate of electrical engineering.

Read more about the project here.

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Engineering students make a strong showing at the Research and Creative Activities Symposium

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn Graduates, News, Students, UndergraduatesLeave a comment

Last Friday, 30 engineering students participated in the university’s annual Research and Creative Activities Symposium—11 bioengineering, 5 computer science, 13 electrical engineering and 1 mechanical engineering—and students from the college won first through third place in the Engineering and Math Division, first place in the Biomedical Sciences Division, and an Emerging Scholars award.

Engineering and Math

First place: Electrical engineering PhD student, Zeinab Mohammadi won first place for her poster “Real time spike clustering for electrophysiology recording” (sponsored by Tim Lei and Chao Liu)

Second place: Bioengineering undergraduate students Jacqueline Chavez, Anne Lyons, Ean Peterson, Jonathan Platt, Ian Garvin, Michel Manzanares, Mikala Mueller and Sarah Lamb won second place for their poster “Craniotomy Training Devices with Reusable Thermoplastics to Help Train Emergency Room and Trauma Surgeons” (sponsored by Craig Lanning)

Third place: Electrical engineering undergraduate student Kyle McGrath won third place for his poster “Exploring Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to Recognize Human Gestures in Edge Computing Environments” (sponsored by Dan Connors and a UROP)

Biomedical Sciences

First place: Bioengineering undergraduate Damon Pool won first place for his presentation entitled, “Optimization of a human induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocyte differentiation method to increase reliability and efficiency for downstream applications” (sponsored by Jeffrey Jacot)

Emerging Scholars Award

Computer science undergraduate students Chris Renden, Lewis Sammons and Jordan Stein won the Emerging Scholars award for their project “Shared rapid prototyping space using hand tracking and virtual reality” (sponsored by Min Choi)

Also, many thanks to the faculty, staff and graduate students who served as judges (my apologies if I missed anyone):

  • Bioengineering: Liliya Vugmeyster, Craig Lanning, Jennifer Wagner
  • Computer Science: Min Choi
  • Electrical Engineering: Md Habib Ullah, Stephen Gedney, Tim Lei
  • Mechanical Engineering: Maryam Darbeheshti

Congratulations!

Project un[Contained] places second, receives social impact award at THE CLIMB

On By CU Denver EngineeringIn Events, News, Students, UndergraduatesLeave a comment

IMG_1546On April 26, six collegiate start-up teams pitched their ideas to a panel of judges at THE CLIMB Pitch Night, hosted by the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship at the CU Denver Business School. Among the six teams was Project un[Contained] and interdisciplinary senior design project advised by Peter Jenkins, professor of mechanical engineering.

Un[Contained] won second place ($2500) and the Social Impact Award ($1000) for their deployable, multi-purpose structure made from upcycled shipping containers and deliver them to developing countries suffering from natural disasters, refugee crises and more. Students on the team include Nic Chandler (MECH), Jason Bergfalk (Architecture), Austin Zerr (MECH), Nicholas Powers (Business), Gage Brumley (MECH), Brad Dyksterhouse (MECH), Riley Hamlin (MECH), Corey McLaughlin (MECH), Jon Farmer (Architecture) and Thomas Satkowski (Business).

Read the full story here.

Congratulations!