Category Archives: Engineering
Engineering consultant Hanyang Eng USA to build headquarters in … – Community Impact
Hanyang Eng USA is bringing its national corporate headquarters to Cedar Park.
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With corporate locations across the world, Hanyang Eng USA provides products and engineering services to a variety of industries, including semiconductors, power generation and mechanical engineering, according to the city.
Hanyang Eng USA has been operating for 41 years and has 1,100 employees worldwide, Director of Economic Development Ben White said. The company will begin operating out of its new Cedar Park facilitylocated at 1635 Scottsdale Drive, Bldg. 6and offer 50 full-time positions by 2025.
White said the company plans to soon expand into aerospace and environmental, green energy, and it will create a 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot clean rooma space free from contaminants thats used to manufacture electronic elements.
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The city will provide a total incentive of $450,000 if the company meets the terms outlined in the agreement.
Im excited to have [Hanyang Eng USA] and everybody moving to Cedar Park, council member Heather Jefts said Its wonderful.
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Engineering consultant Hanyang Eng USA to build headquarters in ... - Community Impact
Petroleum engineering faculty receive regional achievement awards – Pennsylvania State University
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. The Society of Petroleum of Engineers (SPE) has recognized three faculty members of the John and Willie Leone Family of Energy and Mineral Engineering (EME) for their exceptional service and leadership, as well as their significant professional contributions within their technical disciplines at the regional level.
Emami-Meybodi, chair of the Petroleum of Natural Gas Engineering program, said he was honored when he heard the announcement.
Looking at the names of previous awardees, I am grateful to be among them, said Emami-Meybodi. I am also grateful for all the support I have received. Penn State has been such an inclusive and welcoming community fostering a collaborative working environment that has helped me pursue excellence in my research, teaching and service.
The department has received numerous awards from SPE in the past year. Under Emami-Meybodis guidance as faculty adviser, Penn States SPE student chapter recently was awarded the Society of Petroleum Engineers Presidential Award, the highest achievement a student chapter can receive. Russell Johns, professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering, was awarded the 2023 SPE/AIME Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal for technical leadership at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in San Antonio, Texas. The medal is SPEs highest international technical award. Last year, Ayala was one of six recipients to receive SPE Distinguished Membership. The honor is limited to 1% of SPE professional membership and recognizes members who have made significant contributions to society, or who have attained eminence in the petroleum industry or the academic community.
Ayala said he was thankful for the continued recognition from SPE and adamant that his achievements would not have been possible without the support and encouragement from Penn State and EME.
I was truly honored, said Ayala. I felt a great deal of gratitude not only for the recognition but also for having had the opportunity to impact my professional society and community positively. Penn State has allowed me to mold the future engineers that will be part of SPE and provide them with a learning atmosphere that allows them to grow personally and intellectually. I am forever honored and thankful that Penn State has given me a platform to positively impact a community I care about.
Ayalas community building and volunteer work has spanned numerous committees, conferences and activities. He has served as editor-in-chief, editor, and adviser for a young professionals SPE magazine and as executive editor of the SPE Journal, the leading peer-reviewed publication within our professional society.
Johns, acting department head, remarked that the recognition of Penn States continued excellence as one of the top petroleum and natural gas engineering programs in the United States is founded on the strong, interdisciplinary community at EME.
Penn State dominated the international and local awards in SPE this last year outpacing our peer institutions, said Johns. Remarkably, five of our PNGE faculty won international and regional SPE awards. This validates our facultys dedication to teaching, research and service and is a reminder of the high esteem those working in academia and the industries hold towards our program.
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Petroleum engineering faculty receive regional achievement awards - Pennsylvania State University
Engineering team places first, third at inaugural segmentation … – University of Missouri College of Engineering
October 25, 2023
A Mizzou Engineering team took first and third place at a new competition that advanced methods to not only detect but also segment the 3D patterns of brain injury in newborns.
The BOston Neonatal Brain Injury Dataset for Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (BONBID-HIE) Lesion Segmentation Challenge was a Grand Challenge offered by the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI 2023) Society, and sponsored by leaders in the field from Boston Childrens Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is a brain injury that occurs in one to five out of every 1,000 babies. By 2 years of age, up to 60% of those affected will die or suffer permanent defects, said Imad Eddine Toubal, a Ph.D. student in computer science and member of the team.
The group part of the Computational Imaging & Visualization Analysis (CIVA) Lab also included Ph.D. students Elham Soltani Kazemi, Gani Rahmon, Taci Kucukpinar and Mohamed Almansour.
Teams were provided with a small dataset of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exams in infants with HIE lesions of varying shapes and distributions, as well as a few healthy infant brains. From there, participants were asked to characterize the 3D boundaries of the lesions to determine overall volume and affected brain regions.
To better identify the lesions from medical images, the group developed novel AI algorithms combining deep learning methods with traditional machine learning and image processing a multi-pronged approach that separated Mizzou Engineers from the international competition.
Students had on their side Kannappan Palaniappan, a Curators Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, as well as Mai-Lan Ho, Vice-Chair of Radiology at MU Health Care and an expert in advanced pediatric neuroimaging.
Dr. Ho provided really good insight into the complexity of clinical imaging of newborns with HIE. She inspired the team not only to look at the challenge as a computer vision biomedical image analysis problem, but also brought in the clinical aspects and the profound benefits that timely diagnosis and intervention have on early childhood development, Palaniappan said.
Students had to overcome several obstacles during the challenge. First, deep learning typically requires thousands of image volumes for training, particularly for 3D segmentation tasksfar greater than the 85 exams that were provided. Furthermore, traditional approaches to data augmentation, such as random flipping, cropping, and rotation, were not utilized since medical images must retain their normal anatomical relationships.
Additionally, the examinations were of heterogeneous quality, reflecting real-life data from the two different MRI scanners at Boston Childrens Hospital with different vendors and field strengths. Exams were also performed at varying postmenstrual ages and days after birth, such that the anatomy of the brains and character of the HIE lesions varied greatly. To make the algorithms more robust, Almansour resampled all image volumes using volume interpolation to achieve an optimal target voxel resolution for accurate segmentation.
Another problem unique to Mizzou was the fact that team members were sometimes separated by oceans. Almansour and Kucukpinar were at times out of the country during the duration of the challenge.
It was definitely an international effort, Kucukpinar said, who added that his Mizzou Engineering coursework prepared him well for the challenge. It covered everything Ive seen in classes.
To solve the problem, team members focused on three different methodologies: a transformer network to look at images holistically; deep network loss functions to focus on key outcome metrics; and random forest machine learning combining deep and local features to provide more robust classification outputs.
Ultimately, their system performed over 10% better than baseline algorithms, matching the definition of ground truthhuman expert annotations of HIE lesions62% of the time.
Almansour said the challenge complemented work hed done as part of his masters program.
It was nice working on a similar project, and Dr. Pal gave good ideas when things didnt work as expected and we had suboptimal training data, he said.
For Toubal, the workshop provided insights that will help him test algorithms hes working on as part of his graduate research, including 3D segmentation of blood vessels and lymphatics in confocal microscopy volumes.
It allowed me to test the algorithms Ive been developing for my vessel segmentation research, see how adaptable they are to different datasets and identify shortcomings, he said. It also gave me a confidence boost seeing how well our algorithms performed in new areas and challenges.
Dr. Ho praised the entire team for their determination and success.
They were able to develop algorithms that surpassed other top computer science teams from across the world, she said. Very few groups could do the work they do, and its because of the vibrant interdisciplinary collaboration between engineering and medicine that happens at Mizzou.
This was the second challenge Palaniappans research group has worked on this fall. Gani Rahmon, Elham Soltani and Imad Toubal, along with former Ph.D. student Noor Al-Shakani, also participated in the Visual Object Tracking and Segmentation (VOTS 2023) Benchmark, part of the 11-year-old VOT challenge that attracted 77 teams. Mizzou placed 16th overall and 5th in accuracy.
VOTS participants develop algorithms for identifying and tracking video objects in real time. This year, for the first time, students were asked to track multiple objects in both short-term and long-term videos. Teams developed algorithms that would find and track one or more specific objects, such as two boats in a larger fleet over the entire duration of a video, where the objects to be tracked are only seen or identified to the algorithm once in the first frame.
I learned a couple of new deep learning architectures and large foundational models by participating in both challenges. These apply to the motion analysis research Im working on and I am seeing promising results already, Rahmon said.
Be part of innovative research. Learn more about the CIVA Lab.
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Engineering Professor Is the Fellow With All the Fellowships | CSUF … – CSUF News
Sudarshan Kurwadkar, CSUF professor of civil and environmental engineering, completed a 2023 Summer Faculty Fellowship at the U.S. Air Force Academy
Sudarshan Kurwadkar, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cal State Fullerton, recently completed his Summer Faculty Fellowship Program at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. During his 12-week fellowship at the USAFA, he investigated STEM attrition among the academy cadets. He worked with Maj. Christopher Francis and Lt. Col. James Bowers to analyze the students graduation and retention rates over the past decade and how student demographics relate to science, technology, engineering and mathematics attrition at the USAFA.
Kurwadkar recently completed his five-year National Science Foundation-funded, $1.5 million grant project that aimed to increase graduation and retention rates among STEM students. He will lead a facilitated discussion on Transformative STEM Education at Hispanic-Serving Institutions at the American Association of Colleges and Universities 2023 Transforming STEM Higher Education Conference in November. His work at the USAFA is an extension and direct application of his research on this project over the past five years.
In 2022, he participated in the SFFP at the Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he investigated the application of density functional theory to expedite traditional groundwater remediation techniques. The DFT is a relatively new concept and has gained attention for its usefulness and direct application in solving environmental problems. He co-authored his findings in a manuscript, Integrating Density Functional Theory Into Reductive Dechlorination, which recently appeared in the journal Remediation.
In 2021, he received the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine fellowship and participated in the yearlong research at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The NASEM awards fellowships through the National Research Council Research Associateship Programs, which are prestigious senior research awards given to exceptionally talented postdoctoral and senior scientists and engineers through a rigorous selection process that allows the promising scientists and engineers with high-quality research opportunities at federal laboratories and affiliated institutions. During his one-year fellowship with the USEPA, he conducted original research, which resulted in the publication of three significant manuscripts in highly ranked peer-reviewed journals such as Science of the Total Environment and Geoscience Frontiers.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kurwadkar continued his collaboration and actively worked with the Los Alamos National Laboratory through the VFP. He published a first-ever landmark study documenting the effect of barometric pressure variation on the subsurface movement of gases. The study has tremendous application not only for environmental remediation projects, but also in defense sectors. Specifically, the findings of this study may help detect clandestine nuclear explosions long after it has taken place, just by measuring the exsolution of noble gases post-nuclear explosion. In 2021, Geophysical Research Letters published this landmark study, Continental-Scale Geographic Trends in Barometric-Pumping Efficiency Potential: A North American Case Study, in its August issue.
He and one of his undergraduate students were selected for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Summer Faculty-Student Partnership Project, Chemical Agent Sensors, at the Natick Soldier Center, Natick, Massachusetts. Since the faculty-student project was envisaged as an in-person activity, and all federal facilities were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the award was later canceled.
Kurwadkar has consistently obtained several Federal Summer Faculty Fellowships every year. In the last five years, he has obtained three SFFPs with the Air Force Research Laboratory, two with the Department of Energy through the Visiting Faculty Program, one with the Faculty Fellowship Program in Israel, one in Thailand as a Short-Term Visiting Scholar at Mahidol University.
Kurwadkars application to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program is currently under review. His project, Performance Evaluation of Membrane Separation Technologies for Removal of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances will be the first-ever study conducted in the Gulf countries that extensively use the desalination process to obtain drinking water. PFAS is a global human health concern due to its ubiquitous presence in all environmental matrices, including drinking water. This study aims to conduct pilot-scale experiments on different membrane technologies to evaluate their efficacy for removing PFAS.
Kurwadkar is a recipient of the 2020 L. Donald Shield Award for Excellence in Scholarly and Creative Activities, and he continues to pursue research activities in the spirit of the award.
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Engineering Professor Is the Fellow With All the Fellowships | CSUF ... - CSUF News
Civil engineering professor secures $5 million cooperative … – University of Nevada, Reno
Civil Engineering Professor Elie Hajj has entered into a five-year cooperative agreement with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) for $5 million. This is the second time the department of Civil and Environmental Engineerings Pavement Engineering and Science (PES) program has won this highly competitive agreement.
Once more, we succeeded by leading a strong and highly qualified team, backed by our proven track record, Hajj said.
The cooperative agreement, which kicked off Oct. 20, entails a commitment to the development and deployment of innovative asphalt pavement technologies. The funding from the FHWA underscores the importance of the projects deployment of technologies relating to the design, production, testing, control, construction and investigation of asphalt pavements.
The cooperative agreement will enhance technology transfer and communication between universities, state and federal agencies as well as produce educational content. This encompasses marketing and implementation strategies, which are vital to ensure that the innovative solutions and practices are effectively and rapidly adopted by state highway agencies.
The agreement involves writing technical reports, hosting webinars or peer exchanges and producing educational videos that have included graduate students from the University of Nevada, Renos Civil & Environmental Engineering Department. These efforts provide state highway agencies with cost-effective solutions to their pavement-related challenges, supporting agencies in their implementation process and helping them find practical solutions to their challenges.
Congratulations to Dr. Hajj and his team in securing this agreement for a second time, Engineering Dean Erick Jones said. The PES team has had a remarkable impact on asphalt technology, and will continue to do so. The College of Engineering is proud of their efforts and of the educational opportunities they provide to our students.
The FHWA agreement with PES also aligns with one of the Colleges research pillars, equitable infrastructure to mitigate cascading local, regional and global hazards.
The team had to consistently improve its approach and proposal, adapting to the changing goals of the FHWA. The dedication of the team during the previous cooperative agreement led to 18 workshops with approximately 700 attendees and frequent webinars that had over 3,700 people registered. An extensive list of the products delivered by the University can be found on theFHWA Cooperative Agreement Materialswebsite.
The team now is developing Statements of Work (SOWs) in several of the FHWA innovations areas. These SOWs are essential components of the project, outlining the specific tasks, goals and deliverables for the deployment of various asphalt technologies. The FHWA reviews and prioritizes these SOWs, ensuring alignment with their national strategic directions and the cooperative agreement goals.
This cooperative agreement is important not only for the technological advancements it will facilitate but also the exposure it will provide for the University on a national and international landscape.
The engagement, visibility and knowledge we gain are truly invaluable underscoring the capabilities and capacities of the Pavement Engineering and Science Program at UNR, Hajj said.
Students in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Department also receive a leg-up on their peers. They gain real-world exposure to cutting-edge research and practices, enhancing their educational experience. The program's extensive collection of data and research serves as a valuable resource for students, providing them with the latest insights into asphalt pavement technologies.
From a ranking perspective, the cooperative agreement boosts the Universitys and department's standing, showing the innovation of which they are capable. The cooperative agreement positively impacts small communities such as the Reno-Tahoe area as well. Transportation commissions such as RTC can pull from studies and documents generated through the agreement if they are interested in innovative technologies, such as recycled pavements, without footing a big bill for the research.
The Universitys PES program is a nationally and internationally recognized teaching, research and training program in the Department of Civil & Environmental engineering. The team comprises subject matter experts from the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT), Asphalt Institute (AI), Paragon Technical Services, Inc. (PTSi), Virginia Transportation Research Council (VTRC) and Asphalt Testing Solutions & Engineering, LLC (ATS). The team has extensive technical experience in project innovation areas, coupled with extensive marketing and implementation experience.
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Civil engineering professor secures $5 million cooperative ... - University of Nevada, Reno
Professor in electrical and computer engineering named IMAPS … – Auburn Engineering
Published: Oct 25, 2023 4:20 PM
By Diane Pham
Robert Dean, the McWane Endowed Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the Outstanding Educator Award for 2023 from the International Microelectronics Assembly & Packaging Society (IMAPS).
Dean accepted the award at the IMAPS 2023 International Symposium on Advanced Packaging and Microelectronics Assembly in San Diego on October 3.
Founded in 1967, IMAPS is a non-profit association that aims to create connections within and educate the microelectronics and electronics packaging industry. This is accomplished through multiple conferences, workshops, on-site training, and virtual resources. The award recognizes individuals who provide significant contributions to education for the electronics packaging industry and/or to the advancement of IMAPS student chapters.
"It was very rewarding to be recognized by my peers at the Society, said Dean, who has mentored more than 30 students. Over the years, I've taken many students to conferences and helped them publish their work in journals.
Probably the most fulfilling aspect of my job as an educator is having those students that become professors themselves. Its special to see when one of your students is following in your footsteps in academia and seeing your graduates now teaching other students somewhere else.
Originally from the Atlanta area, Dean calls Broun Hall home literally. He earned his bachelors degree in electrical engineering in 1988 and completed a masters degree in electrical engineering in 1991. It's neat to work in the same building that I took courses," he said. "I was a sophomore when they opened Broun Hall. There are times I walk around the building and have memories of being a student here 40 years ago.
Dean teaches a variety of courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Graduate courses include sensors, oscillators, and photovoltaics. His undergraduate specialty is the senior design course.
Im more of a coach than a lecturer, he said. I help them (students) solve problems as opposed to spoon-feeding them information.
When asked about his teaching philosophy, Dean replied, Im here to disseminate knowledge. Youre here to learn the knowledge. Ill do my part. You do yours.
Robert Dean said the most fulfilling aspect of his job as an educator is having students who ultimately become professors.
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Professor in electrical and computer engineering named IMAPS ... - Auburn Engineering
MSU joins National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and … – Mississippi State University
As a new member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicines Gulf Scholars Program, Mississippi State University will support approximately 50 students pursuing degrees in fields that impact the Gulf Coast region. (Photo by Grace Cockrell)
Contact: James Carskadon
STARKVILLE, Miss.Mississippi State University has been selected to join the latest cohort of the Gulf Scholars Program, an initiative led by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM).
As a member of the third Gulf Scholars Program cohort, MSU will receive funding to provide scholarship support to approximately 50 students over the course of five years, along with additional support for involvement with high-impact projects along the Gulf Coast. The initiative, led through NASEMs Gulf Research Program, aims to prepare undergraduate students to address pressing environmental, health, energy and infrastructure challenges in the Gulf of Mexico region.
We are delighted to welcome Mississippi State University as a member of the Gulf Scholars Program, said Karena Mothershed, senior program manager of the Gulf Research Programs Board on Gulf Education and Engagement. As a first-rate educational institution with deep connections to Gulf communities, we believe it is an excellent partner for our efforts to support and inspire talented undergraduates in the region.
Jamie Dyer, Interim Dean for Interdisciplinary Studies at MSU and principal investigator for the grant, said the Gulf Scholars Program at the university will revolve around a new minor in Gulf Coast studies, which will be developed through collaboration among faculty across campus. The university also will support student involvement in outreach projects, internships and other opportunities to engage with communities along the Gulf Coast.
The minor will provide an interdisciplinary educational experience for students to gain not only the knowledge of the social, physical and historical aspects of the Gulf Coast, but also the skills necessary to design and develop solutions to existing challenges that face local communities, Dyer said.
MSU joins a growing network of 18 institutions hosting Gulf Scholars Programs on behalf of NASEM. MSUs cohort includes Auburn University, Prairie View A&M University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Florida.
The National Academies Gulf Research Program is an independent, science-based initiative founded in 2013 as part of legal settlements with the companies involved in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It works to enhance offshore energy system safety and protect human health and the environment by catalyzing advances in science, practice and capacity to generate long-term benefits for the Gulf region and the nation. The program has $500 million for use over 30 years to fund grants, fellowships and other activities in the areas of research and development, education and training, and monitoring and synthesis.
MSU leads several academic and research efforts that strengthen understanding of the Gulf Coast in areas such as aquaculture, atmospheric and oceanic sciences, architecture, engineering, social sciences and more.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, engineering and medicine. They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.
For more information on the MSU Gulf Scholars Program, contact Dyer at jdyer@geosci.msstate.edu.
Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at http://www.msstate.edu.
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MSU joins National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and ... - Mississippi State University
What Healthcare Organizations Should Know about Platform … – HealthTech Magazine
As healthcare organizations continue along their digital transformation journeys, they may be working toward more integrated hybrid care, offering seamless transitions between digital touchpoints and in-person visits.
The growth of virtual care in recent years has also shown promise at meeting patients expectations for more personalized and accessible care. And providers are recognizing the need for digital accessibility in healthcare: 69 percent of providers say digital or mobile access is very important to patients, according to a 2023 Experian Health survey.
Providers are relying on more connected solutions, especially to address staffing issues and to automate cumbersome administrative tasks. From virtual nursing programs to artificial intelligencepowered chatbots, these tech-enabled strategies support clinicians so they can focus more of their time on patients.
DIVE DEEPER: Learn how platform engineering improves DevOps workflows and results.
With all of these considerations, it is clear why DevOps the discipline of combining IT operations and software development is gaining ground in healthcare. Kaiser Permanente in 2018 discussed its DevOps lessons from its enterprise consumer digital strategy.
Whats next as DevOps matures? Platform engineering, which Gartner defines as an emerging technology approach that can accelerate the delivery of applications and the pace at which they produce business value. Heres what healthcare organizations need to know about platform engineering and how it can help support them in their digital transformation.
While DevOps processes helped to improve the speed and quality of software development, organizations still faced challenges, such as added complexity and demand for more resources. The shift to platform engineering simplifies and streamlines tools for developers, allowing for more automation.
Platform engineering is the natural evolution of DevOps, says CDW Chief Architect Neil Wylie. Platform engineering is about combining the right tools with the right qualities into a tool chain to facilitate the needs of the company.
Healthcare organizations that are looking to increase their agility and innovate their approach to care will want to consider platform engineering if they find their DevOps processes need to change.
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Platform engineering brings challenges for healthcare organizations to consider:
Healthcare has traditionally been slower to adopt technological changes compared with other industries, but the past three years has shown that organizations have the ability to embark on major transformations with speed.
As digital patient access, virtual care and connected clinician support mature, healthcare organizations should become more familiar with an emerging movement such as platform engineering if they want to remain agile and improve their go-to-market capabilities.
The point of it is to help developers do whatever it is theyre doing out there faster, Wylie says. We want developers to get what they need as easily as possible so we can get time to market as low as possible. We can help them do that by building our platforms to enable them.
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What Healthcare Organizations Should Know about Platform ... - HealthTech Magazine
Materials Science Engineering alumna selected to receive 2023 … – University of Nevada, Reno
Catriona Cat Black, 95 Materials Science Engineering, is the 2023 recipient of the Scrugham Medal, awarded to alumni who have demonstrated success in their chosen profession. The medal will be conferred at homecoming events this fall.
"I have known Cat since she started as an engineering student at the University, College of Engineering Associate Dean Indira Chatterjee said. She was always so amazing to work with as she had many creative ideas and carried through with all her commitments.
After she graduated, she never failed to maintain contact with me, Chatterjee, who nominated Black for the award, continued. She is highly regarded by her colleagues in industry. She definitely deserves this honor and the College of Engineering is very proud of such an alumna.
Celebrating the honor will be one of the newest members of the Wolf Pack: Blacks daughter, Josie, a freshman at the University of Nevada, Reno, as well as her son Ben, a mechanical engineer and graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
The first graduate in the then-new Materials Science program, Black has worked as a product engineer and process engineer in various industries in northern Nevada, most recently as the director of Federal Operations Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) at Microsoft. Throughout her academic and professional career, she has supported her fellow women engineers, a commitment dating back to her college years, when she got involved with the student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
I feel passionate about engineering as an amazing choice for women, Black said. You get to be creative. You get paid money to be creative. Youre doing design work based on (scientific) truth. Its like being an artist with a different set of tools.
For Black, engineering might have seemed the obvious choice: her older brother and sister both are chemical engineers, and her father, James Telford, was a physics professor at the University and at the Desert Research Institute. Blacks path was a little more circuitous: after graduating Reno High School and volunteering with the Washoe County Sheriffs Office Hasty Team, a volunteer search-and-rescue group, she spent a few years working in law enforcement. But at age 23, her path led back to engineering and to the University.
I came back to engineering because I was darn good at it, she said.
Originally studying mechanical engineering, Black switched to materials science after a class in the topic piqued her interest, and found a mentor in Mackay School of Mines Dean Dick Bradt. (At that time, materials science still was associated with the Mackay School of Mines; Chemical & Materials Engineering now is a department within the College of Engineering.) During those years, she met Chatterjee, whom Black says was the only female engineering professor at the University.
In the early 1990s, engineering did not always seem welcoming of women, Black recalled, but between Chatterjee and Bradt, she was afforded opportunity and support: she co-authored journal-published research papers and got involved in the Universitys SWE chapter.
Within SWE, Black took on many roles, including that of newsletter editor, a position in which she and a fellow SWE member produced an Internet-based newsletter (new at the time) funded by Apple. She also served as chapter president and was active in raising funds for the group so that seniors could attend the national SWE conference, an experience she recalled as one of her fondest University memories.
It was dynamic and fun, she said.
After graduating in 1995, she worked at Precision Castparts and then Tripp Enterprises before moving on to Microsoft, her current employer. Often the only woman on leadership teams, Black mentored up-and-coming women engineers through SWE as well as on the job. And while engineering remains a male-dominated field only 21% of engineering majors are women, according to the American Association of University Women report The STEM Gap Black welcomes the progress she has seen since she was an undergrad: I think we have evolved away from the notion engineering isnt for women.
Along with social change, Black also has witnessed physical changes of the University campus. When she was a child in the 1970s, her father would drive to the Leifson Physics building and park in front of it to go to work. When she was a student here in the 1990s, the College of Engineering was centered mostly in the Scrugham Engineering and Mines building and the Palmer Engineering Building. The William Pennington Engineering Building, which currently houses most of the College of Engineering labs as well as the Computer Science & Engineering Department, was decades in the future, along with the Knowledge Center, the Joe Crowley Student Union and many other structures.
The growth of this University is just amazing, Black said. I cant wait to see it through my daughters eyes.
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Materials Science Engineering alumna selected to receive 2023 ... - University of Nevada, Reno
Fortifying your engineering ecosystem: The three pillars of application security – CIO
The engineering ecosystem has undergone a massive paradigm shift more languages, more frameworks, and minimal technical or procedural barriers to adopt new technologies or implement third-party tools and frameworks. This comes as organizations are racing to ship software as quickly as possible to deliver new features and cloud applications to remain competitive.
To speed up development and deployment, many organizations have turned to continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) solutions for more automated and agile software testing, building, and deploying processes. This shift has brought unprecedented velocity, flexibility, and agility to engineering with 77% of organizations now deploying new or updated code to production weekly, and 38% committing new code daily.
Speed is great, but not when it comes at the expense of security. Bad actors are quickly recognizing the engineering ecosystem as a threat vector that is both easy to target and ripe for exploitation often ensuing significant and lucrative results. The infamous Solar Winds attack occurred because a build system was exploited, and malware was spread to 18,000 clients. In another recent example, cybercriminals successfully infiltrated and disrupted CircleCI, a leading CI/CD platform storing highly confidential client secrets and tokens. These incidents underscore how a single unsecure element in an engineering environment can result in detrimental consequences at scale.
The engineering ecosystem is often overlooked as security teams tend to focus more on reducing runtime misconfigurations and vulnerabilities rather than addressing vulnerabilities across the entire attack surface. This new reality and rising attacks requires us to think differently about application security the overarching security umbrella over the engineering ecosystem. The traditional AppSec challenge of preventing security flaws and misconfigurations from reaching production is much more complex. In parallel, there is a completely new breed of risks and threats focused on abusing security flaws in the different systems and processes across the software delivery chain, all the way from code to deployment.
An effective application security program for the modern engineering ecosystem can be broken down into three disciplines:
SIP targets the code and artifacts flowing through the pipeline, en route to production, and aims to prevent security flaws and misconfigurations from reaching production environments. In SIP, we are required to continuously identify all development languages and frameworks in use across an organizations entire codebase and ensure we have the appropriate scanners and engines bespoke to those languages and framework woven into the development process in the most frictionless way possible. This ensures new issues arent introduced into the codebase, and that existing issues are gradually eradicated.
SOP focuses on the security posture of each and every individual system within the software delivery chain from code to deployment as well as the interconnectivity between these systems and the third parties they use (the software supply chain). SOP is based on the understanding that the engineering ecosystem has become a lucrative target for adversaries, who have realized that engineering ecosystems provide a highly effective way to execute malicious code in sensitive environments, and gain access to highly critical secrets and tokens. In SOP, rather than focusing on the code and artifacts flowing through the software delivery chain, as we do in SIP, the focus is on the security controls and measures around the delivery chain itself.
SAP is designed to ensure the integrity of the software delivery chain and apply the appropriate controls to prevent anyone, both humans and applications, from bypassing it. The reality is that achieving optimal SIP and SOP is only partially effective if an attacker can push code directly to production or deploy a malicious container directly to K8s. To achieve effective SAP, we must be able to answer 2 main questions:
Effective application security now extends far beyond the traditional scope of code scanning and must reflect the modern engineering environment. SIP, SOP, and SAP center around supporting the speed of engineering without compromising on risk and security management. By focusing on these three disciplines, organizations can guide their security and developer teams to build modern, secure, and scalable engineering ecosystems in the cloud.
Learn about the top 10 CI/CD security risks and what practical actions you can take to secure the engineering ecosystem.
Daniel Krivelevich
Palo Alto Networks
Daniel Krivelevich is a cybersecurity expert and problem solver, enterprise security veteran with a strong orientation to application & cloud security. After an extensive service in Israels Unit 8200, Daniel held multiple positions in the AppSec domain spanning across offensive, defensive and consulting positions. After having led Application Security and Cloud Security with Israeli IR firm Sygnia for four years, working with 100+ enterprises on optimizing Cyber resilience, Daniel co-founded Cider Security as the companys CTO, leading the companys product and technology all the way from inception to acquisition by Palo Alto Networks. Today, Daniel serves as CTO of AppSec for Palo Alto Networks.
Excerpt from:
Fortifying your engineering ecosystem: The three pillars of application security - CIO