Ilian Pappas love for technology dates back to when he was just a boy growing up in Albania. He had always excelled in mathematics and physics. Having a mother who came from a biochemistry background helped. I have always gotten satisfaction from proofing or solving problems, he says.

Upon moving to Greece at the age of 16, Pappas love for science and electronics continued to blossom. The courses he took in high school inspired him to pursue a bachelors degree in Electronics at the Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki.

When the time came to look into postgraduate studies, Pappas foundation opened a variety of doors. He got accepted to institutions in Austria and the UK, but one university stood out to him for multiple reasons. The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) was not just facility-filled or a comfortable home for 1,500 international students every year, it was also far more affordable than most.

Source: University of Southern Denmark

Whats more, the university has a programme that was aptly in line with his goals. I wanted something in electrical engineering for my masters and SDUs option to combine power electronics with mechatronics sounded very attractive to me, he shares.

The programme that caught his eye? SDUs MSc in Engineering Mechatronics. This programme nurtures trouble-shooters to design and develop high-tech mechatronic products for an ever-evolving market. As consumers increasingly demand faster and more flexible products, these professionals will remain in demand creating effective products that could also save energy.

Source: University of Southern Denmark

Apart from a suite of technical skills that identify problems and optimise production, students are set to graduate with crucial leadership skills. This know-how produces engineers that work across disciplines transforming product ideas into practical solutions for everyday life. In short, its a programme that nurtures development engineers with special competencies in mechanics, electronics, and software.

Those who decide on this route become part of a project-based study environment that focuses on problem-solving. Real-world problems ensure students graduate career-ready. The programme accomplishes this by receiving project outlines from companies looking for solutions. Alongside hands-on teachings and a student-centred approach to learning, Pappa thoroughly enjoyed classes in control systems, electromechanics, switch mode converters, grid connected converters, and VHDL during his studies. He also considers the MDB projects to have been extremely useful.

I believe having a masters degree helps to some extent in finding a job. On the other hand, SDU is a university that companies in the region both know and appreciate, he explains.

Source: University of Southern Denmark

At SDU, immersion opens doors. Graduates often enjoy a range of job opportunities both within Denmark and abroad. Many succeed as development engineers with managerial responsibility, specialists in specific technologies, consultants, educators, researchers, entrepreneurs or even project managers.

We find the study programme really interesting, because we envision great opportunities for engineers who master multiple disciplines, says INFOCOM A/S CEO Bent Kristensen. Especially here at INFOCOM we can easily picture an engineer with a degree in mechatronics as a project manager.

The First Job Guarantee scheme ensures SDU graduates hit the ground running. The joint effort by the university and Southern Denmarks vast array of local companies offers fresh grads six months of employment, if they have yet to acquire a position on their own.

Pappa landed a rewarding role of his own just days away from graduating. Now a hardware engineer at Danfoss Power Solutions in Nordborg, he credits the knowledge he gained at SDUH for his present success. The top three SDU offerings that have prepared him for the rigours of the workforce? Exposure to research, collaboration, and lessons in todays engineering tools. Industry knowledge was an added bonus. SDUs Department of Engineering gave him the chance to job shadow in Danfoss Silicon Power in Flensburg and visit FORCE Technologys EMC lab in Aarhus with the rest of his class.

Both were very good in giving me an impression of a company while gaining in-depth knowledge on new technologies or projects, he enthuses. I am currently practising EMC testing as a professional and Ive had the chance to meet the same people I did when visiting as a student.

If youre ready to network with leading industry figures, join a vibrant multinational campus, take part in a comprehensive programme, and ultimately learn the fundamentals of engineering products of the future, click here to begin your SDU journey.

Follow SDU on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and LinkedIn

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Learn to engineer products of the future at the University of Southern Denmark - Study International News

Lacing the stratosphere with particles could reduce the Earths temperature. But is it worth the risk? (Chris Gardner / AP Photo)

Governments should consider solar geoengineering for two reasons. The first is that other ways to avoid the worst effects of climate change may not prove achievable in the world as it really is. The other is that, if there is a risk that another government might attempt to transform the atmosphere, it would be delinquent not to have thought through how to react. That means trying to understand what the effects of such engineering might be on your own country and the world.1

There is little doubt that lacing the stratosphere with particles that reflect sunlight back into space would decouple Earths surface temperature from greenhouse gas levels, allowing for cooler temperatures than otherwise would occur. On a planet with greenhouse gas levels expected to deliver 2.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, solar geoengineering could in principle limit the actual warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. It could also allow temperatures to be decreased even as greenhouse gas levels stayed the same or declined only slowly. Both of these possibilities seem, on the face of it, worth examining as ways to avoid global catastrophe.2

But there are also other, more disturbing possibilities. One is that solar geoengineering might be used to keep temperatures the same even as greenhouse gas levels continue to rise, allowing some or all countries to shirk their commitments to cut their net emissions to zero by mid-century. Perhaps even worse is the possibility that simply raising the prospect of solar geoengineering could reduce progress on emissions cuts and curb the development of all other ways to limit temperature rise.3

When I worry about the possible impacts of solar geoengineering, I worry most about that last scenario. Its a fear that I share with many who see it as a reason for the governments of the world to come together and pledge never to embark on a solar geoengineering project. But that argument is both impractical and paradoxical. It is impractical because no country can be assured that every other government will abide by the constraint in perpetuity. And it is paradoxical because if I believed that the governments of the world could be trusted to unite in solidarity and unanimity, then I would believe that they could then be trusted to deploy a modicum of solar geoengineering and slash emissions at the same time. The possibility of such self-denial undercuts the argument that governments are so reckless that a ban is needed.4

If governments should pursue solar geoengineering because they cannot be sure that others will refrain and because of the chance that it could reduce harm, how then should they move forward?5

The obvious answer is through sustained research aimed at understanding as much as possible about the effects of solar geoengineering on factors other than global temperature. What could such technologies mean for the water cycle in various regions, for changes in seasonality, or for extreme events? How might they be implemented in ways that maximize benefits and minimize risks?6

But research alone is not enough. The dangersincluding that of a diminished appetite for emissions cutsand the rewards of solar geoengineering do not fall on the same people, the same countries, or even the same generations. To fully consider geoengineering would be to ask questions about who it could be made to benefit and how. It would be to evaluate the contexts in which it might be justifiable and the contexts in which it should be resisted. It would be to ask whether it could be carried out in a safe and just wayand under what circumstances and modes of governance it might be likely to exacerbate tensions to the point of war.7Current Issue

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Part of me thinks that this consideration could be a grand thing: a way of debating the great issues of the Anthropocene, what it means for democracy to enter into the arena of the Earth system, and the role of politics and purpose in the planetary economy. But I acknowledge that I am much too tempted by such ideas. The sort of consideration I envisage would be endlessly pressured by other issues, endlessly at risk of being derailed or suborned by fossil fuel interests. To hope for something better is not to deny the influence of those who want to maintain the status quo.8

But unsatisfactory debate is still preferable to treating the issue as untouchable. To govern, the radical French Prime Minister Pierre Mends France once said, is to choose. Choices over moral absolutes require no consideration. In most matters, though, choices are better when options, distinctions, and consequences are considered. The possibilities of solar geoengineering fall firmly into that second, much larger camp.9

Oliver Morton10

Lab-created meat, bioplastics, those hideous shoes made out of recycled packagingthe world is littered with Band-Aid fixes to environmental problems. Geoengineering will be the most expensive and potentially the most destructive example of this yet. Theres an enduring trouble with solutions that dont address the root causes: Theyre unlikely to solve the problem and will almost certainly create new ones.11

Im old enough to have reported on so-called clean technology, or cleantech, when geoengineering made headlines around 2008. Then, as now, some leading climate scientists were encouraging governments to invest in geoengineering research and development. Back then, people talked about seeding oceans with iron to spur plankton blooms that would absorb carbon and then die, pulling the gas along with them to the bottom of the sea. Biochar was big back then, tooturning plant waste into CO2-laden briquettes that we then bury. Even the idea of synthetic trees that would capture CO2 and store it in liquid form underground got some buzz.12

Today, experiments are still under way for all those carbon capture technologies, including, somehow, artificial trees. But most of the excitement around geoengineering these days is focused on what seemed fringe just a decade ago: solar geoengineering, which attempts to change how Earth reflects the suns rays by spraying tiny particles into the atmosphere. A team of scientists at Harvard have been experimenting with this for years, injecting various chemical cocktails into a glass tube containing an exact replica of the stratosphere. In December, they announced plans to take the tests out of the lab and into the Swedish skies as early as this summer.13

Around the same time as the announcement, researchers from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, Zhejiang University in China, and elsewhere published a study that found that while solar geoengineering could, in fact, cool surface temperatures on Earth, it would also increase the frequency of El Nio and La Nia extreme weather events. Those scientists concluded it was not worth the risk. I should also point out that most of the climate scientists who advocate for geoengineering research have never stopped saying that its dangerous. Frank Keutsch, the principal investigator on the Harvard project, for example, told the MIT Technology Review, I still think this is a very scary concept and something will go wrong.14

Research is always necessary, and were at the point where we cant exactly turn up our noses at technological solutions and assume companies and politicians will suddenly do the right thing. I get that. My concern with geoengineering is that its not being accompanied by shifts in policy or investments in less sexy but better-proven energy-efficiency strategies. Its also being embracedand in many cases fundedby fossil fuel companies desperate for a fix that doesnt require them to strand assets or lose profits.15

But arguing over this or that approach to address the climate crisis is a fools errand. It will not be solved by new technologies laid atop the very system that created it in the first place. Climate change is the sort of problem you end up with when a small number of people have power over the whole world and are incentivized to put their profits before the common good. The problem is the power structure, not the power source.16

In the absence of government funding for research into a wide range of climate solutions or even the political will to say that we need to stop drilling for fossil fuels, Im also concerned that were left with corporate philanthropy, a system that enables wealthy individuals to create policy without participating in democracy. Lets take the Harvard experiment. Its funding list is a whos who of Silicon Valley: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Bill Gates, the venture capitalist Chris Sacca. Just because the tech industry is enamored of its ability to both disrupt the world and save it doesnt mean we want it picking the solutions to the greatest problem the world has ever known.17

Keutsch said something else to the MIT Technology Review that highlights the disconnect between funders of geoengineering and the people doing the science: I think better understanding what the risks may be is very important. Given the quickness with which solar geoengineering could provide some sort of temporary relief to global warming, he was worried that politicians might be tempted to use it, risks be damned. Keutsch isnt researching geoengineering because he thinks its cool but because he thinks its dangerous. Like many scientists in this field, he hopes we never use this technology. Some of the technologys champions, however, are framing a worst-case scenario as the best case. No surprise that those who benefit most from the status quo would sooner risk the entire planet than their positions on it.18

Amy Westervelt19

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Should Governments Consider Engineering the Atmosphere? - The Nation

The Importance of Standards in Fire Equipment Manufacture

The following are excerpts from an address by A. R. Small, vice-president, Underwriters Laboratories, read before the Western Association of Electrical Inspectors, at their annual meeting held in Memphis, Tenn.:

The Underwriters Laboratories part in the great war is a part of two phases or divisions. The first and original part, a close analysis at the present time will show, is the greatest part that we are playing in the war. I refer to the Standards of Underwriters Laboratories. I had the pleasure of addressing a meeting in Chicago a couple of months ago, a meeting of manufacturers of acetylene appliances, and entertain them, I hope, for a few moments with the thought that the work which the Underwriters Laboratories has previously done in cooperation with manufacturers, electrical inspectors and others in the preparation and operation of standards had quite a significance in connection with carrying on the war. I reported to the audience and will take up your time in reporting to you the value to the United States government of work which has been done at Underwriters Laboratories since 1914 in cooperation with the manufacturers of cotton rubber-lined fire hose.

Specifications for Hose.

Several members of the staff devoted a great deal of time in that year to a careful analysis of existing specifications for fire hose, such as used in municipal fire departments and also in private plants. An agreement was reached with the manufacturers and others interested officially as to a common specification for fire hose. That specification was put into force and gradually was applied in the factories of twelve principal manufacturers of fire hose in this country. On August 15, 1917, the quartermasters department of the United States Army concluded that it wanted fire hose in the new training camps and wanted it at once. Its attention was called to the standards which Underwriters Laboratories had prepared and promulgated and to the work which manufacturers of fire hose had been doing with the Laboratories, with the result that the quartermasters department telegraphed twelve manufacturers of fire hose inquiring as to when they could begin to ship fire hose conforming to this specification and labeled by Underwriters Laboratories. On the 22nd of August, seven days after the department realized its need of fire hose, the twelve factories began to ship and before the 15th day of November twelve factories had shipped in excess of one million feet of 2 1/2-inch single jacket fire hose to each one of the sixteen principal cantonments for the National Army and to each one of the training camps for the National Guard. The manufacturers of fire hose were prepared. The reason they were prepared was because this standard had been worked out long previous to the war and in this particular case had been applied in their plants. As you know, it is the policy of the government to send its own inspectors to every factory where government materials are being manufactured. It was not necessary in this case for the government to enlist, train, equip and send to twelve factories twelve or more new inspectors who had to be broken into the work of examination and testing of fire hose. The inspectors of Underwriters Laboratories were already active in these plants, examining and testing fire hose to be shipped to the municipal fire departments and to the plants of private property owners. As a result, the manufacturers were able to start in immediately with the production of hose along a schedule with which they were already familiar, having the work supervised by an inspector already acquainted with the peculiarities of fire hose and the things which it is necessary to watch in testing it. Each 50-foot length of this more than 1,000,000 feet of fire hose was subjected to a pressure of 300 pounds at the factory, its elongation from ten pounds up to 300 pounds being measured, lengths having excessive elongation or otherwise not conforming to specifications being rejected. In one case our inspector one morning turned down 20,000 feet of hose and the manufacturer had no trouble in convincing himself that the inspectors action was proper.

Insulated Wires.

Similiarly in the case of insulated wires, at the beginning of the war the navy department decided it wanted 3,000,000 feet of 14 duplex, lead covered and it wanted it quickly and it wanted it to be tested. There again through Standards of Underwriters Laboratories it was not necessary for the navy to train a crew of new inspectors to go into twenty-six factories and learn how to inspect goods at the cost, of delay in shipping them out. Our inspectors at the wire plants were thoroughly familiar with all of the problems in examining and testing lead-covered cable and the material was delivered to the navy department with the very least possible delay.

The other phase of Underwriters Laboratories part in the great war is one which I feel that we have very little right to brag about, because every one of you, every one everywhere, every loyal citizen, every corporation or organization composed of loyal citizens is taking a similar part in this great war. Out of a staff of 120 people at the Chicago, out of a staff of 26 additional people, I think it is, at the Pittsburgh, New York and Boston offices we have on our service flag 31 stars.

In Touch with Government.

We are in constant touch with one or the. other departments in Washington. It is my own privilege to correspond with some engineer of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, some engineer of the Quartermasters Department, some representative of the Fleet Corporation almost daily, sometimes several times each day, giving them what information is available in our records and from the experience of the members of our staff on almost everything from oxygen acetylene welding or cutting plants to roll roofing, from rubber hose to methods of testing molded insulation, from actual factorv inspection work on cartridge enclosed fuses to how to install a fire door. Many large depots for the storage of ammunition of one kind and another are being erected in France and here. Each one of these depots has a number of tin-clad doors on them to prevent the spread of fire from one depot to another. These doors are all hung with Underwriters Laboratories standard fire door hardware. The doors themselves are all Underwriters Laboratories standard, are inspected at the factory and labeled. Very often the government has need for special information as to how this or that particular form of device will work. There have been a number of serious fires in warehouses of different kinds and it is now planned to equip all government plants with a special form of fire extinguisher. The installation of automatic sprinkler equipment, I understand, has been considered as too expensive, but a special form of fire extinguisher is to be installed in each one of them. The engineers of Underwriters Laboratories are being consulted daily as to how fire extinguishing appliances can properly be applied in these warehouses for their protection. Manufacturers of hand extinguishers are working night and day turning out standard appliances which are inspected, tested and labeled by the Underwriters Laboratories before these devices are accepted by the Quartermasters Department or the Navy Deparment for delivery. Each member of the staff of the Chicago office has an opportunity in some way to serve directly. Many of us feel that we would like opportunity to serve more directly. I presume in that feeling we are in no way different from any one of you in your own business.

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The Importance of Standards in Fire Equipment Manufacture - FireEngineering.com

For a half century, women have played leading roles in research, teaching and innovation at Princetons School of Engineering and Applied Science. Today, engineering faculty also includewomen who completed their graduate or undergraduate degrees at Princeton. Spanning different disciplines and generations, each of them has made outstanding contributions in her respective field, and each exemplifies Princetons traditions of fundamental research and engineering in the service of humanity.

This year, Princeton engineeringcelebrates Womens History Month and the100th anniversary of Princetons engineering schoolby featuring stories, perspectives and insights from three Princeton Engineering alumnae:

Jennifer Rexford, the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor in Engineering and a 1991 B.S.E. graduate;Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo, the Theodora D. 78 and William H. Walton III 74 Professor in Engineering and a2001 Ph.D. graduate; andNing Lin, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and a 2010 Ph.D. graduate.

Jennifer Rexford is the chair of the Department of Computer Science and the Gordon Y.S. Wu Professor of Engineering. She received a B.S.E. in electrical engineering from Princeton, and masters and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Michigan. Rexford joined the Princeton faculty in 2005 after eight and a half years at AT&T Research.

Q. What reflections would you share from your time as an undergraduate at Princeton?

A. I decided to attend Princeton because I wanted the combination of a great engineering school and a great liberal arts education, while also being part of a small, close-knit community. That really narrowed down my choices! Another aspect of Princeton I only came to appreciate later was the opportunity to do research with the faculty. In pursuing my independent work projects in my junior and senior years, I fell in love with doing research, and that put me on the professional path Ive followed ever since.

While I truly appreciate my engineering education and my overall Princeton experience, I did find the two somewhat disjointed. These days, its much more integrated with the rest of the University, with many students taking engineering courses, getting involved in activities hosted by the Keller Center [for Innovation in Engineering Education] and the Center for Information Technology Policy, and more. I think thats a big win for Princeton students in general, whether engineering majors or not.

During my junior year, the campus was celebrating the 20th anniversary of coeducation at Princeton. My then-roommate Yvonne Ng 91 and I wanted to hear the stories of the women engineering students at Princeton, and particularly the early trailblazers. We embarked on a labor of love that became the book Shes an Engineer? Princeton Alumnae Reflect. It became a way for us to understand the experiences of women as engineering students and the place of engineering at Princeton.

Q. Whats most exciting about your research now?

A. My research focuses on computer networking, and particularly the internet. I have long been excited about how computer science in general, and the internet in particular, lower the barriers to innovation and enable a wider range of people to see their ideas flourish.In my own research, I am excited about making the underlying network infrastructure more programmable, so the internet can more easily evolve to be more secure, reliable and performant in the years ahead.

Q. What advice would you give to aspiring engineers?

A. I would encourage engineering students, whether at Princeton or elsewhere, to take advantage of every opportunity to take courses in the humanities and social sciences, not only to gain broad perspective or to hone your thinking and writing skills, but also because these intellectual pursuits are fascinating. I would also encourage students to resist the sense that they need to pick one passion or career over another. So often, we can find ways to combine our interests, and often engineering can offer a surprisingly relevant lens to topics that seem far afield.

Finally, I would encourage aspiring engineers to seek out mentors, whether among the faculty, practitioners, or more senior students and colleagues, and to realize that they can be wonderful mentors themselves, much earlier in their careers than they might realize.

Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo is the Theodora D. 78 and William H. Walton III 74 Professor in Engineering, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, and the director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. She earned dual bachelors degrees in chemical engineering and materials science and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2007.

Q. What stands out from your time as a Ph.D. student at Princeton?

A. I really grew as a scientist and as a person at Princeton. The environment was just right for me its small, and I was looking for a [research] group that was pretty hands-on, because I came here without much confidence in the direction I was going or knowing what I wanted to do. Rick Register was my adviser, and joining his group made the difference for me during my formative years of becoming a scientist.

At the same time, I think Princeton has a lot to offer graduate students. Where else can you go where you can be in a top engineering program and still have the opportunity to take classes with famous authors and thinkers? I sat in on classes with Toni Morrison and attended a seminar by Cornel West. As a double science major at the University of Pennsylvania, I didnt take many humanities and social science courses. Here, I enrolled in a sophomore-level English class, and thats where I really learned how to write.

Q. How did that experience lead you to your current research?

A. The work I was conducting [as a graduate student] was very fundamental; it was to understand how polymers crystallize. That taught me a lot it taught me how to be a deep thinker, it taught me how to be rigorous, it taught me a lot of fundamental polymer physics. But I knew that I wanted to work on something more applied, taking the knowledge and the experience that I had to look at functional materials. So, I did a postdoc at Bell Labs. And then I took the time to find my comfort zone between the very fundamental and very applied, and thats where my group currently sits.

Were interested in understanding structure-function relationships of electrically active materials. We use them to make solar cells, we make transistors, and, in particular, were excited about transparent solar cells that can be integrated into windows to provide point-of-use power sources to run smart windows that can cut down on building energy consumption. And it ties into the dual energy challenge that we often talk about, which refers to the need to increase energy access and living standards around the world, while reducing carbon emissions on a large scale.

Q. What advice would you share with students who are just getting started in science or engineering?

A. When I talk to prospective students, I tell them, You know who you are. Be true to yourself and know where your comfort zone is. And then, you take two steps outside your comfort zone. You dont take 10 steps outside your comfort zone, because then the learning curve is too steep and youre bogged down by all the nomenclature and all the things that you need to learn before you can make progress, and that can be very discouraging.

But if you take two steps outside your comfort zone, thats where you can maximize your own personal growth, your satisfaction and your impact on the world. Today, the most impactful work is at the boundaries of disciplines, so being open to exploring, collaborating and communicating with people who are very different from you whether by background, experience or expertise thats how youre going to maximize impact.

Ning Lin is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and an associated faculty member of the High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment. She earned a bachelors degree in civil engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology; and a masters degree from Texas Tech University and a Ph.D. from Princeton, both in civil and environmental engineering. She joined the Princeton faculty in 2012.

Q. What were some of your experiences as a student at Princeton, and how did they shape your career?

A. I was super excited to be at Princeton, but early on I felt behind because other students seemed to have more preparation and background. But I quickly saw opportunities in the classroom. Of course, Princeton courses are very rigorous, but the professors always start from the basic concepts and they always welcome students who have little background in the topic. My classmates were also friendly and willing to help.

The course requirement for [civil and environmental engineering] graduate students is 10 courses, but I ended up taking over 20 courses in different departments: engineering, natural sciences, public policy, applied math. My adviser, Erik Vanmarcke [now an emeritus professor], was very open and he supported me exploring ideas through courses and interacting with other scholars and students. I built a strong foundation in math and physics, but at the same time broadened my horizons, which led to my cross-disciplinary research on hurricane hazards and risk.

My initial field of research was risk analysis in engineering, but Ive become more focused on hurricane hazards and risk. I had learned wind engineering and structural engineering before, which means looking at how we design structures to resist strong wind effects, but when I came to Princeton I got more interested in hurricane science and the effects of climate change.

Q. How does your research bring together climate science with engineering and policy?

A. Much of my research has been focused on the risks of different hazards induced by hurricanes: extreme wind, storm surge, rainfall and flooding. I also model the hurricanes themselves using physical models and statistical models. A big focus is on the effects of climate change on hurricane features and hazards, and the resulting impacts on engineering systems and communities and social systems.

Traditionally, engineering design has been based on historical records of environmental loads, assuming that the future will be similar to the past. But these infrastructure systems will be used for a long time 50 or 100 years so, they will be affected by climate change, including changes in wind, temperature, precipitation, sea level and storm surge.

We have to incorporate understanding of climate change into our design, but we dont have a framework to do that yet because its a whole new idea for design, and the climate science itself is still developing and has a lot of uncertainties. In my research and also in my teaching, I try to incorporate climate change into risk analysis to develop a new framework for engineering design and decision-making.

Q. What insights would you share with those who are just beginning their careers in engineering?

A. When I was an undergraduate, I thought engineering was a narrow discipline, but now I feel that engineering is getting broader and becoming more connected to social science, natural science, policy and art. And our society is becoming more connected and more global. So, engineers have to take on challenges and solve problems on larger scales, including problems like climate change. I would encourage engineering students to broaden their research scope and make friends in various fields. Engineers should be prepared totackle big problems related to the well-being of society.

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Women's History Month: Engineering faculty and alumnae reflections - Princeton University

AMES, Iowa It has been a tug-of-war for the top spot among the graduate programs in biological/agricultural engineering ranked by U.S. News and World Report magazine.

Two years ago the programs at Iowa State and Indianas Purdue University tied for first. Last year, Iowa State was first. This year, Iowa State is second.

Iowa States program has a lot to offer its graduate students, said Amy Kaleita, the departments interim chair and a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering (ABE).

While COVID-19 has been a difficult time in higher education, were pleased that ABE has sustained our research funding over the last year, she said. These funds provide great opportunities for graduate students to engage in the high-impact research happening in ABE.

Kaleita said the departments graduate students are doing amazing work winning superior paper awards from our professional society, winning Iowa States three-minute-thesis competition, and providing leadership in campus and national organizations.

She also noted new facilities are opening including the new Feed Mill and Grain Science Complex, the Soil-Machine Dynamics Laboratory, and the Off-Highway Vehicle Chassis Dynamometer that will provide graduate students access to state-of-the-art resources for advancing their research and building their professional portfolio.

The magazine released its annual rankings of various graduate programs this week. Other highlights for Iowa State include top 26 rankings among public universities for engineering and business schools, as well as eight engineering departments ranking among the top 25 publics.

Each year, the magazine ranks programs in business, education, engineering, law, medicine and nursing. Those rankings are based on different measures in each field, but generally include data about incoming students and the career or academic outcomes for graduates.

The magazine also periodically ranks programs in the sciences and humanities. Those rankings are based on the ratings of academic experts.

The magazines latest rankings of Iowa State graduate programs include:

The rest is here:

Agricultural and biosystems engineering graduate program ranked among the best - Iowa State University News Service