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At a University of Virginia open house Saturday, there were robots of all shapes, sizes and applications.

There was a robot with knobby tires that could pick up rocks on alien terrains, and a robot that could play rock-paper-scissors.

There was a robot that could perform military training, and a robot that could apply peaceful brush strokes to a persons arm to relieve anxiety.

But one creation stood head and shoulders above the rest. Though not reaching its namesakes 6-foot, 2-inch height, a robotic Thomas Jefferson greeted prospective School of Engineering and Applied Science students and their parents.

The third U.S. president and Founding Father, who also founded UVA, bowed and waved as families entered Link Lab. The automatons sensors cued to their motion. With a ponytailed wig, a face provided by smart phone and a torso draped in period-reminiscent clothing, the robot indeed made for a recognizable Jefferson.

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Robot Thomas Jefferson Welcomes Prospective Students at ... - UVA Today

Varun Shah has always been interested in pursuing medicine. When he enlisted in the military after graduating high school for Singapores compulsory National Service, he thought becoming a combat medic would be his best fit.

Now 20 years old, Shah is currently a freshman studying biomedical engineering in Boston Universitys College of Engineering after serving two years in the Singapore Armed Forces as a combat medic. His job in the military entailed providing emergency medical treatments to patients in the jungle.

Sometimes Shah went on two-week-long missions into the jungle, while other times he spent his mornings seeing patients and spent his afternoons physically training. He said one of the main things that stuck with him is the feeling of happiness when some higher-ranked officials came to him later to thank him for his services.

The biggest joy that I can get is when a patient comes back after six weeks and tells me that his wound is completely healed, Shah said.

Jorge Rivera, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and friend of Shahs, said that his habit of caring for others is still deep rooted within him now. Rivera said Shah responds immediately when something is wrong.

You could be laughing or joking around with him and he sees [that] someone is upset or something and his tone switches, Rivera said. [He is] situationally aware and knows how to handle.

Another one of Shahs friends, Egor Podkosov, a freshman in ENG, said he found Shah interesting rather than intimidating.

I was surprised the first time I knew [that he was in the military] because he doesnt strike you as another tough military guy like you see in movies, Podkosov said. He is very open, very friendly with everyone he speaks to.

Outside of class, Shah conducts research with the Chen Lab and Eyckmans Lab. He said he is one of only two freshmen who work in this lab full of doctoral students.

Shah said the work that he does in the lab is directly related to his experience as a combat medic in the Singapore Armed Forces. They conduct research on how wounds heal and under what circumstances what kind of cells regenerate in different parts of the human body and form scaffolds.

The fact that I used to see different injuries and observed different injuries as a healthcare provider, and now seeing them under the microscope, Shah said. Thats pretty cool.

He was paired with a fourth year biomedical engineering PhD student, Anish Vasan, based on his interests who was working on tissue engineering.

Vasan described Shah as driven, focused and disciplined. He said he believes Shahs time in the military really translated in his work in terms of discipline and his drive further motivates both Vasan and their principal investigator in the lab, Jeroen Eyckmans.

His experience [as a combat medic] is invaluable, Vasan said, Some of his field experience means that he asks questions that I would not have expected from someone who is a freshman.

Shah is currently assisting Vasan in his project, but eventually Vasan envisions him to take more independence with the project and derive a small part of the bigger project that they are currently working on.

Shah said he hopes to stay in Boston over the summer and conduct further research on cell regeneration. Later on, he hopes to go to graduate school and pursue a PhD in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.

For now, Shah said he is lucky to be surrounded by so many inspiring people at BU.

BUs campus is full of really other interesting STEM students, Shah said. Full of people whom Im pretty confident will give back to society down the line.

Continue reading here:

Combat medic to biomedical engineering student: the journey of ... - Daily Free Press

Donna Riley, a recognized leader in engineering education and in bringing diverse views into the field of engineering, will beginApril 1 as the Jim and Ellen King Dean of Engineering and Computing at The University of New Mexico.

She is the 22nd and first female dean of the School of Engineering, which was founded in1906. She also holds the rank of professor in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering at UNM.

She joins UNM from Purdue University, where she was the Kamyar Haghighi Head and Professor in the School of Engineering Education since 2017. She previously was professor and interim head in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, and from 2013-2015 served as program director for engineering education at the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Riley spent 13 years as a founding faculty member of the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, the first engineering program at a U.S. womens college. She is a fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and recently was elected as vice president of scholarship for ASEE, a two-year term beginning at the 2023 ASEE Conference and Expo in Baltimore in June.

Rileys research focuses on the field of engineering education, especially the integration of ethics, communication, social analysis, lifelong learning and how those skillsets help in the formation of engineering professionals. She is the author of two books,Engineering and Social JusticeandEngineering Thermodynamics and 21stCentury Energy Problems.She is the recipient of the 2016 Alfred N. Goldsmith Award from the IEEE Professional Communications Society, the 2012 Sterling Olmsted Award from ASEE, and the 2010 Educator of the Year award from Out to Innovate.

While she was at Smith, she received an NSF CAREER Award in 2005 for Liberative Pedagogies in Engineering Education. The award is NSFs most prestigious award in support of early career faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research.

For early-career faculty, especially those with an eye toward advancing their research and academic administrative careers, the NSF CAREER Award is a highly sought-after credential, and Riley of course was interested in seeking the award. However, due to her initial scholarly interests in transdisciplinary approaches to environmental justice, she was discouraged to learn her topic fell in between two funding directorates at the National Science Foundation.

I was told that I could never win a CAREER Award because my research didnt fit into one of the predetermined categories. They told me not to apply. I was crushed.

But thanks to her connections with some mentors and professionals in the engineering education arena, she was encouraged to pursue an award after learning there was a new engineering education category. Riley drew on innovative approaches to teaching engineering that she had been exploring in Smiths new engineering program, drawing both inspiration and encouragement from author bell hooks, with whom she had a conversation during one of hookss visits to Smith. Riley said hookss book,Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, had a profound impact on her, and she shared some of her ideas sparked by the book with the author.

When she told hooks her thoughts about what eventually became the subject of her CAREER Award developing critical pedagogies for engineering classroom implementations the trailblazing author and academic gave her the validation that helped her find success.

She said, You have to write about this. And so I did, and it became my NSF CAREER Award project, Riley said. It was a bit of an unusual experience that led me to win the award.

Riley was born and raised in Los Angeles, and it was actually the citys legendary smog that first piqued her interest in engineering and environmental concerns. Her father was a first-generation college graduate, earning a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from what is now Missouri S&T and pursuing a career in the oil and gas industry.

Taking his advice, she also pursued chemical engineering, earning a bachelors degree from Princeton University. Having a passion for environmental science and the ways that engineering and policy intersect, she earned a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in engineering and public policy.

Always curious about fields outside engineering, Riley enjoyed taking various courses in social sciences and not only found the subject matter engaging, but also the teaching methods. She noticed a marked difference in the way a literature course that is focused on ideas and questions and discussion was presented in comparison to a typical engineering course, which often is presented in a one-way lecture style.

I kept thinking, How do I teach more like they do in the social sciences? That is really what got me interested in the field of engineering education.

While being a dean is a new role for Riley, she said she and her female assistant professor colleagues at Smith started preparing early, connecting with a network of female academics and deans of engineering who have served as mentors through the years.

Although as a female in engineering she is used to being one of the only women in a room (she was the only female department head in the College of Engineering at Purdue), coming in as the first woman dean of UNM Engineering will be a new milestone: This will be the first time Im a first.

One of the things she liked about UNM was that the university is open to change and new ideas, and that is no different in the traditionally male field of engineering.

Many of the universitys leaders are female including some who are engineers so I think UNM is ready for it, she said. Its really exciting.

Riley and her spouse are looking forward to enjoying some things she couldnt experience in the Midwest: New Mexican culture and learning about xeriscaping. She also enjoys hiking, running, art, food (both cooking and eating) and crafting, especially knitting.

As dean, she is ready to hit the ground running the next few weeks with a listening tour to gather information about the School of Engineerings successes, opportunities, challenges and more. She will then synthesize that feedback into a comprehensive plan that will guide her priorities for the School.

She will be fine-tuning her priorities over the coming months, but two areas she wants to focus on are creating and growing partnerships for research, economic development, and education, and inclusive excellence, including how we can own the fact that we are both a Hispanic-Serving Institution and an R1 institution where impactful research is key.

UNMs 2040 goals will be front and center as well.

UNM 2040 was one of things that excited me about UNM, she said. There is a clarity of purpose and vision, with a focus on how to use discovery, learning, and engagement to improve lives while also leveraging inclusive excellence.

While she expects some new focuses, she said the vision of the School of Engineering will likely have a lot of familiar aspects to it.

I believe in not fixing what isnt broken, she said. I look forward to the challenge of bringing together different perspectives of various groups, both internal and external, to move us forward toward a common goal.

A continued emphasis on building UNM and the School of Engineering as a leader will undoubtedly be a priority for Riley.

We have to remind ourselves why we are here. We are here for the students, and for the people of New Mexico, to improve lives and further economic development, she said. We have got to have a better-prepared workforce. This has to be a collaborative effort, and with UNM as the states flagship institution, it is our role to take the lead.

Media contact: Kim Delker, Marketing Manager, UNM School of Engineering, (765) 427-0300, ksdelker@unm.edu

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Riley ready to lead as dean of the School of Engineering - UNM Newsroom

Engineers are taking over.

A long-observed but hardly quantifiable phenomenon, known as the engineering superiority complex, has plagued campus since the universitys founding. If you thought the pre-med complex was bad, it really does not compare to this one. Ranting about orgo labs? Thats better than doing engineering. MATH 162 WebWork? At least you dont have to solve second differential order circuits. Complaining to a friend about your upcoming philosophy paper due? Well, actually, shut up, because listen, theyre an engineer, and theyve probably spent more hours of their lives on their weekly problem sets than you have sleeping. Conversely, theyve spent as much time sleeping as you have scrolling on TikTok in one sitting hopefully (and also hopefully not) more than two hours. Thats the complex in a nutshell.

The CT spoke with the excessively conceited majors themselves to learn more about this phenomenon. Across the Universitys five academic programs within the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the students of interest included biomedical (BME), chemical (Chem-E), electrical and computer (ECE), mechanical (Mech-E), and optical (no real campus colloquialism apparently, just optics) engineers. Computer science students were not interviewed because they do not qualify as engineers.

The complex, initially thought to be a general sense of superiority over non-engineers, proves to be much more complicated. Within the engineering school, there are evident power trips, namely among the BMEs. Sophomore Bee Emmy, a BME with a Cell & Tissue Concentration, said, Even though BMEs just basically take a tour of all the other engineering majors, I still feel that our majors legit, referring to the BME curriculum, which requires them to take the intro classes for every other engineering major and somehow combine it into one useful degree. Emmys concentration in Cell & Tissue means that she takes classes with Chem-Es, while her peers concentrating in Biomechanics join the Mech-Es most of whom when interviewed regret choosing BME and wish they did Mech-E from the start while the literal handful of Signals & Systems BMEs split off sadly to group with the ECEs.

Some shots were also fired at the BME optics engineers. Senior Fourier T. Spark, tired of being clowned for choosing BME signals, deflected and instead raised a very legitimate question: Why would you do BME optics when you can just be an optical engineer? Unfortunately for Spark, with less than one semester until graduation, hes also too far along on his majors pathway to switch, because why would you do BME signals when you can just do ECE?

In the process of stopping strangers on the engineering quad, the CT also mistakenly interviewed some students coming out of Hutch, who appeared to be engineers due to how lifeless and depressed they looked, but were really just pre-meds coming from the morning chem lecture (weaklings). After shifting locations to the entrance to Goergen to filter out pre-meds, a new question came to mind: If a pre-med and an engineer had a fight, who would win? Obviously the engineer unless they are the same person.

Yes, there are actually engineering pre-meds. The only logical question to ask next would be why on earth a hapless soul would subject themselves to that. Luckily, Goergen was the perfect spot to get some answers. Unfortunately, actually speaking to students of this rare breed was a mistake and directly revealed the absolute worst egotistical combination you can find.

I know this will sound super narcissistic, but pre-med is just too easy for me. Thats why Im an engineer. So I can do both, the deranged student standing in front of me said, as he sipped from a trenta cold brew. The student did not wish to disclose his name, but did disclose that he was a Chem-E, and that he was conducting research in three labs, managing three engineering and pre-med societies, and performing weekly open-heart surgeries on patients at URMC.

Mysteriously, the number of students enrolled in Hajim skyrocketed from last year. The reasons are currently unknown, but the running suspects are the Dunning-Kruger effect (aka reverse imposter syndrome), herd mentality, and a general consensus on why-suffer-less-when-you-can-suffer-more. Whether the incoming class is actually smart or marginally competent is TBA, but hey, theyre engineers.

Truly, in no other department will you find majors as culty, conceited, and attention-seeking as Hajim. The iZone project rooms are swarmed with desperate engineers crowding at office hours; once you see the formulas they write up on the Gleason studio whiteboards its all Greek, where are the numbers? that should be your red flag to run away while you can. Every single one of them has no real reason to brag except for the flimsy excuse that they are, in fact, an engineer. Still, if you ask any engineer what engineering is, they shouldnt be able to give you a straight answer. (If they do, theyre not a real engineer.)

Spark agreed. You never really know what youre doing in class, honestly, he said. You just kind of plug in numbers and hope that in lab the thing doesnt explode.

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A chat with engineers on the engineering superiority complex - Campus Times

American Indian Hall at Montana State University was designed by 2022 Intermountain Design Firm of the Year Morrison-Maierle.

Image Courtesy of MSU News Service

ENR Mountain States is putting the finishing touches on our annual top design firms lists, which will be published in the May/June issue of the magazine. The firms will be ranked based on 2022 revenues for work done within the Mountain States region (Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and the Dakotas). Our top designers issue will also include more specialized lists of the top firms in the region ranked by the amount of sector-specific and green work they have done in the past year.

We have received nearly 70 surveys so far, and those firms are listed at the end of this blog post. If your firm is not listed, we have extended the deadline to Monday, April 24 to give you a little more time. Note: due to space limitations, its possible that not all firms that submit surveys will be included in the print ranking as a result of their revenue totals.

Check out last years Colorado/Wyoming/Dakotas ranking here and the Intermountain ranking here. Fill out a survey to be included in this year's ranking here and check out information about all our regional top lists, including Top Contractors at this link. If you have any questions, please reach out to Jack McMackin, ENR's data coordinator for surveys and rankings, at mcmackinj@enr.com, or ENR Mountain States editor Jennifer Seward, at sewardj@enr.com.

Here's the list of firms that have completed the survey:

Affiliated Engineers Inc.

Alfred Benesch & Company

Atwell LLC

Ayres Associates

Bowman (Bowman Consulting Group)

BSA LifeStructures

Burns & McDonnell

CannonDesign

CMTA

CTA Architects Engineers

David Evans and Associates

Davis Partnership Architects

DLR Group

EDA

Electrical Consultants Inc.

Eppstein Uhen Architects Inc.

Farnsworth Group

FFKR Architects

Galloway

Gannett Fleming

GGLO

Goettsch Partners

HNTB Corporation

Horrocks Engineers

Huckabee

IMEG Corp.

Johnson, Mirmiran & Thompson Inc.

Kennedy/Jenks Consultants Inc.

Kimley-Horn

Kleinfelder

Martin/Martin Inc.

Maser Consulting P.A.

ME Engineers

Merrick & Company

Method Studio

Michael Baker International

Morrison-Maierle Inc.

Mott MacDonald

Ninyo & Moore

NWL Architects

Parametrix

Perkins&Will

Plummer

R&R Engineers-Surveyors

Raba Kistner Inc.

RATIO

Reaveley Engineers

RS&H Inc.

SAM LLC

SEH

Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB)

Spectrum Engineers Inc.

Stanley Consultants

Stantec

Sunrise Engineering

Swanson Rink

SWCA Environmental Consultants

T2 Utility Engineers

Terracon

The Beck Group

Think Architecture Inc.

TreanorHL

WGM Group Inc.

Wilson & Company Inc., Engineers & Architects

Woodard & Curran

Jennifer Seward is editor of ENR Mountain States, which covers Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Utah, Idaho and Montana. She has more than two decades of experience writing for the AEC industry and reports from Denver.

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Talk of the Rockies - Engineering News-Record