Easton Dobson (left) and Colin Haagensen flank Steve Coolidge, general manager of AAA Sales & Engineering on the floor of the companys Oak Creek plant. Dobson, Haagensen and another student, Ryan ODay, worked on a project that benefited the company and gave the students real-world experience. (UWM Photo/Troye Fox)

The three UWM senior engineering students stood on the workroom floor of a Wisconsin manufacturing company, about to tell 70 older, experienced machinists how to improve their inventory system.

Easton Dobson, Colin Haagensen and Ryan ODay promised their audience that the idea they were about to hear an idea that originated with management and was engineered by the students would make their jobs easier.

We had made sure along the way to get the perspective of the machinists, said ODay, who graduated in December 2022 with an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering. We wanted to hear what was really happening on the floor.

It went well. So well that the company Oak Creek-based AAA Sales & Engineering (AAASE) adopted the students proposed solution: a bar-coding system they simply called the Inventory Traceability Project.

Steve Coolidge, AAASEs general manager, estimates the Inventory Traceability Project will save the company $840,000 annually. As promised by the UWM students, it has already made the machinists jobs easier by significantly reducing the time it takes them to locate parts in the 80,000-square-foot building.

AAASE provides precision machined castings and forgings for 13 clients including Caterpillar and Eaton and maintains about 400 active part numbers at any time. Hundreds of times daily, machinists must locate these parts, searches that had ranged from one to 62 minutes.

Sometimes, Coolidge said, machinists just gave up the search and sought out a supervisor.

We had no formal inventory system, he said. The only system we had was institutional knowledge. This worked for the tenured workforce, but as new employees joined us, it became a problem.

Which is why Coolidge sought help from UWMs Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering, housed in the College of Engineering & Applied Science. It was the first time AAASE worked with UWM.

Through a senior design class for industrial and manufacturing engineering students, AAASE challenged the team of Dobson, Haagensen and ODay to create a method to record and maintain the physical location of $2 million worth of parts that ranged in price from $17 to $1,400 each. In this mandatory class, students work on teams as they transfer their classroom knowledge to real-world industrial problems.

Academics are important, but applying what you learn in the classroom to business is fundamental, said ODay, who will pursue a masters degree in data science in fall 2023 at the University of Denver. We were tasked with a sizeable project from an actual client, and it was very valuable.

Coolidge mentored the student team over the three-month project. They were advised by Dah-Chuan Gong, a UWM visiting scientist who is a supply chain and logistics expert, and Wilkistar Otieno, associate professor and chair, industrial and manufacturing engineering.

Industrial engineering students learn how to make things better in any industry by analyzing and optimizing the integration of people, machines, materials, time and other resources.

Industry-driven, senior design projects give our students an incomparable way to learn and grow, Gong said. In the process, they face current, real-world industrial problems. To succeed, they must learn more carefully how to define scope, how to apply appropriate methodology, and how to measure and justify their results.

Today on the workroom floor at AAASE, machinists are using the Inventory Traceability Project to easily locate parts. The average search time for a part has decreased from 11 minutes to less than three, which means the companys 46 machines are idling 3,500 fewer hours each year. Human error from manual data entry has been reduced, and the process of identifying parts and transferring information has been streamlined.

There will be more to come. The students set up the system so the company could roll it out incrementally.

The student team did an amazing job of working with our employees, Coolidge said. They brought a passion for making their work easier and more efficient, and our team immediately respected them for that.

This isnt the first time that engineering students helped a company solve a problem. Last year, another group of students created a system that saved a Saukville specialty steel manufacturer more than $40,000.

The students knocked it out of the park, said Ted Fitzpatrick, a process metallurgist at Charter Steel and the teams contact at the company. The entire reason we changed the heat-treatment cycle was because of the work the student group did. They took it above and beyond.

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UWM engineering students create solution that saves company ... - University of WisconsinMilwaukee

Nicole Dafoe will be the next dean of Slippery Rock Universitys College of Engineering and Science. Dafoe, who has worked at SRU since 2012, has served as an interim dean since January 2022.

April 18, 2023

SLIPPERY ROCK, Pa. Slippery Rock University today announced the appointment of Nicole Dafoe as the dean of the College of Engineering and Science, effective this summer. Dafoe, who has worked at SRU since 2012, has served as an interim dean since January 2022. Following a nationwide search and recommendation from a University search committee, Dafoe's appointment was approved by the administration.

"We are grateful to have Dr. Dafoe's contributions as interim dean and we're pleased to know that we'll have her continued leadership as we advance our College of Engineering and Science," said Michael Zieg, interim provost and vice president for academic affairs. "She has proven to be more than capable of succeeding as the dean and we look forward to further benefiting from the experience and knowledge that she brings to this role."

Dafoe was interim dean of the College of Health, Engineering and Science from January 2022 to June 2022 and continued as interim dean of the CES upon the creation of the College of Health Professions in July 2022. Dafoe led a successful reorganization of the CES after several departments joined the CHP. She also developed a short-term strategic plan for the CES and worked closely with staff, department chairs and other faculty to support the growth of academic programs by providing resources to meet accreditation standards and establish articulation agreements with community colleges and other enhancements.

"I'm incredibly excited and honored to become dean and I look forward to working with faculty, staff and students," Dafoe said. "As an interim dean, everything I've done has been short term, so I'm eager to tackle projects and goals that require sustained focus from the dean's office. This is a great college and I'm ready to continue developing articulation agreements, making connections with industry and building our academic programs."

The CES represents more than 80 faculty members from six departments:

SRU's School of Engineering has undergone growth during Dafoe's leadership, with the addition of three new laboratories completed last year and three more scheduled to be completed by fall 2023.

A native of Port Huron, Michigan, Dafoe first joined the SRU faculty in 2012 as a biology professor and became department chair in 2017. A plant molecular biologist by training, Dafoe earned her Ph.D. in biology from the University of Victoria in Canada, and her Bachelor of Science in biology from Grand Valley State University in Michigan in 2003. Her research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals during her career and she worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service from 2009-12 studying the defense response in maize against the European corn borer.

MEDIA CONTACT: Justin Zackal | 724.738.4854 | justin.zackal@sru.edu

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SRU names Nicole Dafoe as dean of the College of Engineering ... - Slippery Rock University

The CEO of a Palo Alto-based firm is pushing back on allegations that his company lavished San Mateo Community College District officials with gifts and trips in exchange for a lucrative contract,according to a letter sent Tuesday to the districts governing board.

Karim Allana wrote that the college districts allegations contained in a lawsuit filed in February against his company, Allana, Buick & Bers, Inc. are flung wildly and recklessly and have put his business at risk.

Allanas firm is one of five contractors and consultants the San Mateo Community College District sued on Feb. 8 as part of its ongoing corruption crackdown. The complaint filed in San Mateo County Superior Court seeks damages from the companies as well as Ron Galatolo, the districts disgraced chancellor who was charged withmisappropriating public funds and tax evasion in 2022 following a corruption probe by the San Mateo County District Attorneys office.

The suit alleges Galatolo accepted gifts and benefits from executives, including Allana, and in exchange helped steer contracts funded through voter-approved bond measures to the firms named in the lawsuit. It claims Allana and AB&B gave thousands of dollars worth of gifts to Galatolo in exchange for a contract to build a solar farm at Caada College in 2013, which a corruption probe by the DAs office contends was rife with financial abuse.

Allana also allegedly lavishedGalatolos co-conspiratory former Vice Chancellor of Facilities Planning and Operations Jose Nuez with gifts, including sporting event tickets and expensive meals in order to get the solar contract.

But in a letter sent Tuesday to the Board of Trustees, Allana calls the districts allegations outlandish and deeply concerning, arguing that its the result of one Trustees political vendetta, rather than a result of any impropriety.

Not once, not ever, not with this Community College District nor any other public or private entity. Any suggestion otherwise is malicious and defamatory and we will take legal action accordingly, Allana said. Ultimately, ABB never sought, or to its knowledge, received any special treatment or consideration. SMCCCD has never received less than full value for the fees paid to ABB and has suffered no economic loss as a result of its contracts with ABB.

Allana argues the districts suit ignores key facts, including that he received more in value from Mr. Galatolo than he received from myself or ABB, the letter says. The district references miles that were given to Galatolo to travel, but fails to mention that Mr. Galatolo reciprocated by paying for my hotel and another stay, either which were of greater value. Galatolo also allowed Allana to use his boat in Lake Tahoe on multiple occasions, which says is a value that significantly exceeds any alleged benefit he ever received from me.

These reciprocal exchanges demonstrate the absence of any net transfer of value from ABB or myself to Mr. Galatolo that could be considered a giftlet alone pay to play, the letter says. The allegations contained in this lawsuit are designed to be salacious and grab headlines, but they will not survive even a modicum of scrutiny.

As a result, Allana is asking a county judge to strike allegations made against ABB, arguing that the firms work with the district predates my personal relationship with Ron Galatolo or Jose Nuez by over 10 years.

As stewards of the Districts limited taxpayer resources, the Trustees have a duty to not only ensure this lawsuit does not end up being a waste of time and significant public funds, but that public money is not being used for one Trustees political purposes, the letter says.

The districts complaint says that ABB submitted a bid package for the 2013 solar project for $4.9 million but was allegedly allowed to correct it to $4.5 million after the deadline to outbid its competitor, evidenced by an email sent there days later. Years later the projects final cost ballooned back to $4.9 million.

Allana says contracts and change orders between ABB and the (district) were approved by the (district) Board of Trustees, and not by Mr. Galatolo nor Mr. Nuez and that Galatolo did not have the authority to give us these contracts as that authority solely rests with the Board of Trustees.

The districts suit also mentions Allana asked Galatolo to tap into his political relationships to get Congresswoman Jackie Speier to officiate his wedding. Allana says even if that allegations were accurate, it is completely irrelevant to the underlying allegations in the Districts claim.

In reality, Mr. Galatolo offered, unprompted, to ask the Congresswoman to preside over the union and she graciously accepted, the letter says.

The districts suit also names Allanas brother and nephew, one of who is a recruiter of foreign students at the district and another who is an accountant for the district. Allana says the district names them for no other plausible purpose than to bully and harass.

There is no legal basis to attack my wedding or name my family members in a lawsuit against my firm, Allana says in his letter. This is a Community College District, not the Godfather, and public resources should not be spent fulfilling one Trustees personal and political retribution.

Allana says ABB does not wish to be engaged in litigation with a longtime client with whom we have accomplished so much and said the districts lawsuit is destined to fail for the same reason the District Attorney, after myriad of interviews and an investigation spanning many years, did not choose to pursue a criminal action against me or my firm.

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Palo Alto engineering firm denies Bay Area college districts pay-to-play allegations, threatens suit - The Mercury News

Yeast are carb lovers, sustaining themselves by fermenting sugars and starches from sources such as dough, grapes, and grains, with bread, wine, and beer as happy byproducts. Now, researchers have made one type of yeast a little less dependent on carbs by enabling it to use light as energy.

The work, reported last week on the preprint server bioRxiv, is the first step in more complex modes of engineering artificial photosynthesis, says Magdalena Rose Osburn, a geobiologist at Northwestern University who was not involved in the research. It also recapitulates a key evolutionary transitionthe harnessing of light. It is extraordinary, says Felipe Santiago-Tirado, a fungal cell biologist at the University of Notre Dame. To some extent, its like turning an animal into a plant.

Well, not quite. To convert carbon dioxide into sugars that fuel life on Earth, plants rely on a protein complex that includes chlorophyll to shuttle both electrons and protons, which perform chemical reactions and transfer energy. Researchers have been working for years to recreate photosynthesis to explore how to use light more efficiently as an energy source for solar panels and other applications and to breed plantsand other organismsto be more productive.

But the chlorophyll complex requires many other molecules to do its job. So Anthony Burnetti, a geneticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia Tech evolutionary biologist William Ratcliff sought a simpler solution. They homed in on a protein known as rhodopsin, which doesnt require a large molecular entourage. Its a solution nature has settled on as well: Bacteria, some protists, marine algae, and even algal viruses use rhodopsin to convert light into usable energy, often to pump protons for cellular functions.

The researchers began by inserting a rhodopsin gene that belonged to a marine bacterium into brewers yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) in a petri dish. Burnetti hoped the rhodopsin would find its way into the yeasts vacuole, an enzyme-laden sac that degrades unneeded proteins. An energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate (ATP) fuels the process by pumping protons into the vacuole to make its interior acidicoptimal for degradation.

Burnetti wondered whether light energy could do that job instead. But the teams first effort misfired when the rhodopsin protein made by the gene went to a different compartment known not for protein degradation, but for protein synthesis. So Burnetti looked instead for rhodopsin already known to exist in vacuoles. He settled on using one from corn smut, a fungal pathogen. By attaching a green fluorescent tag to the protein, he and his colleagues verified that it had localized to the yeasts vacuole, as they hoped.

Graduate student Autumn Peterson, a member of Burnettis team, went a step further to prove this engineered yeast was indeed using light. She grew the new strain in the same dish as the original, unaltered yeast and exposed it to green light, the wavelength rhodopsin is most sensitive to. The cells in the light-sensing strain had shorter lives but reproduced fast enough to outgrow the nonlight sensing yeast by 0.8%, the team found. Thats a massive advantage, says Santiago-Tirado. Over time, in the light, Peterson expects the light-using cells to eventually replace the unaltered ones just as early light users might have replaced their competitors in nature eons ago.

Burnetti and his colleagues think light induces the rhodopsin to pump more protons into the vacuole, relieving the cells need to expend ATP for this task and instead freeing up that energy to help the cell grow in other ways. Increasing the acidity inside the vacuole may decrease it outside the vacuole, causing enzymes there to work faster and wear out sooner, which may also help explain the higher death rate among these altered cells. Whichever way its working, It is clearly of benefit to the yeast cells, says Michael McMurray, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

But the experiment may not reveal much about how rhodopsin use evolved in nature. I think the authors overemphasize the evolutionary significance of their work, says Robert Blankenship, an emeritus biochemist at Washington University in St. Louis. This is an artificial construct and is not the product of natural evolution.

Others think the work can have industrial, medical, and basic research applications. Alaattin Kaya, a biologist who studies aging at Virginia Commonwealth University, says these yeast cells can help clarify why vacuole acidification over the life of a cell sometimes seems to cause mitochondria to malfunction and in turn accelerate aging. He would love to add rhodopsin to mitochondria themselves to observe its impact.

Burnetti would like to target mitochondria as well, but for a different reason. Even though it seems to have never happened in nature, we definitely plan to eventually put rhodopsin into the mitochondrion. Because mitochondria can make ATP efficiently, adding rhodopsin could provide a lot of energy directly from the Sun, just as photosynthesis does. In that regard, yeast would then be a little more like plants.

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Scientists engineer the first light-powered yeast - Science

In the spirit of this years World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development (WED), one of the most exciting advancements in the world of engineering worthy of highlighting is the evolution of cloud solutions and how they enable engineers to deliver projects faster, more securely, cost effectively and even more sustainably.

As organisations continue to face ever-growing data management challenges such as poor data governance policies and lack of in-house expertise leaders have been able to look to Cloud to provide solutions that can help engineers overcome these challenges.

However, as project complexity increases, data growth spirals and with ever increasing competition, an evolution of hybrid cloud services is needed to help address the issues. Organisations need capabilities, services and tools which give them a common set of data management features across on-premises and cloud resources, thereby simplifying operations so IT can enable engineers to deliver on strategic business priorities rather than becoming a burden.

It is vital for organisations wanting seamless engineering operations across on-premises and cloud environments that common hybrid cloud operational services are built to deliver better security, sustainability and are designed to improve time to market whilst reducing the cost to deliver this.

Due to the rapid acceleration of digital transformation over the past few years, most organisations are now evolving towards more data-driven business models.

Underpinning this transformation is the need to maximise the use of the data. As a result, data accessibility, storage locality, cost, security, and protection capabilities have become critical for day-to-day engineering operations. Because of this, decisions on IT infrastructure no longer only concern IT Managers, but also have an impact on engineering application and design specialists also. Engineering and DevOps are colliding!

So, to build and secure a hybrid multi-cloud data estate in this new era, a service thats both flexible, automated, and cost efficient is required to ensure outcomes are predictable and consistent automation, orchestration and self-service are key attributes that must be included!

This is where having a consistent hybrid multi-cloud enterprise data management solution is essential, it helps accelerate business outcomes, protect against outages, and enables rapid recovery even if these do occur.

The solution must also defend company intellectual property with hybrid multi-cloud built-in data security and automatic ransomware protection. We also today cant forget sustainability; a top engineering focus and one which uniquely a hybrid multi-cloud enterprise data management solution can also help address.

Advanced hybrid cloud services can be built with a strong foundation that facilitates the adoption of business enabling data management in whichever way each organisation sees fit.

On top of this, organisations should look for data management capabilities which enable greater flexibility by supporting multiple protocols and data types, whilst also giving managers the ability to scale up or down their data storage needs without disrupting engineering operations.

Investing in the right data management solutions gives organisations the capability to drive efficient and seamless integrations with public and private clouds enabling easy flow of data between on-premises and cloud environments.

In our digital world, huge amounts of data are being created, captured, copied, and consumed. As it stands, global data creation is estimated to rise to more than 180 zettabytes by 2025.

Its unsurprising then that the increasing amount of data being generated by businesses is becoming more challenging than ever before to manage and protect.

But for engineers to work efficiently, the data management process must be simplified. Providing a comprehensive data management solution thats optimised for modern hybrid multi-cloud environments will enable large-scale engineering projects to proceed seamlessly.

With hybrid multi-cloud data management solutions ensuring data is available where needed, it gives leaders the ability to make and act on insights in real-time, positively impacting business outcomes. Ultimately enabling engineers to focus on innovation and achieving business objectives.

About the author

Grant Caley, CTO at NetApp

Grant Caley is an experienced Chief Technologist with a proven history of working with all levels of customers and partners across all sectors. With 20 years background in the industry, he helps clients understand, define and implement data management and data services across a hybrid cloud landscape with a particular focus on enabling business agility, cost efficiency and operational consistency, governance and risk control. He also supports organisations developing strategic outcomes for new and developing technologies such as artificial intelligence, DevOps and cloud.

Prior to his current role, Grant has led the technical account management of a number of large global finance customers as well as previous roles for IBM and other UK organisations.

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How cloud-based solutions play a significant role in engineering - The Manufacturer