March 2016 Five10 Report

Nnaoma Agwu, bioengineering senior, shared his thoughts on diversity and STEM education in the context of a Jesuit education. Read his account here.

Civil engineering students received three awards this year at the Student Construction Competitions of the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) in Reno, Feb. 10-13. The ASC student competition was attended by 1,300 students from more than 20 universities from the west coast and mountain regions.

Thao Nguyen-Pham '16 M.S. '17 (expected) (civil engineering) was awarded a $3,000 scholarship from the American Council of Engineering Companies of California based on GPA, recommendation, essay, work experience, and extracurricular activities. In addition to pursuing her combined civil engineering BS/MS degrees, Thao also works as a City of San Jose Engineering Trainee.

Vishvesh Shah (MS computer engineering) and three external teammates won first prize at the NFL Hackathon in San Francisco Feb. 20-21. Using machine learning, they calculated the probability between a quarterback and receiver for a successful pass, and were awarded $10,000 as well as a trip to NFL Headquarters where they will demo their hack to NFL engineers and staff.

Todd Goolkasian's (BS civil engineering, 1985) company, Cornerstone Structural Engineering Group, Inc., has won a National Engineering Excellence Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) for their design of a $20 million bridge replacement project that was cost-effective, bat habitat-friendly and delivered in an unprecedented two years' time.

Mike Sizemore '12 MS '14 (mechanical engineering) is featured in the Center for Sustainability's newsletter. The 2009 SCU Solar Decathlete is now a professional business analyst with Sunrun, where he develops connected technology in the fast-paced, evolving renewable energy industry. Read his story here.

Mohammad Ayoubi and graduate students Benjamin Margolis and Joshua Baculi (mechanical engineering), presented papers at the 26^th AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting in Napa: “Fuzzy Attitude Control of Solar Sail with Translating Control Masses via Linear Matrix Inequalities,” and “Model Predictive Control of Planetary Aerocapture Using Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy Model.”

Alka-Shah Jarvis (computer engineering adjunct lecturer) was named an expert on Industry 4.0/Smart Manufacturing, representing ANSI/U.S., in the strategic advisory group to the ISO's Technical Management Board, and helped draft the latest 9001-2015 version. She has a new book, “ISO 9001:2015, Understand, Implement, Succeed."

Yuhong Liu and Nam Ling (computer engineering) have a chapter, "Security, Privacy and Trust for User Generated Content: The Challenges and Solutions," accepted for publication in the book, "Big Data Management, Architecture, and Processing," Kuan-Ching Li, Hai Jiang, and Albert Zomaya, ed., which will be published by Taylor and Francis in 2016.

Hisham Said (civil engineering) received a research grant ($9,883) from MCA Inc. for a 6-month study to develop new tracking systems and processes for flexible production operations of prefabricated building products and assemblies.

Panthea Sepehrband, Matthew Lee '13 MS '15, and Aaron Burn '16 (mechanical engineering) presented their paper, "Pre-Straining Effect on Precipitation Behavior of AZ31B" at The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society's TMS 2016, Nashville, TN, Feb. 16.

Toshishige Yamada (electrical engineering) was selected to the Advisory Panel Board of the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, which is concerned with all aspects of applied physics research. The journal heavily relies on a selection of outstanding physicists and other scientists for constructive and careful analysis of submissions.

Aleksandar Zecevic (electrical engineering, and associate dean of graduate programs) recently traveled to India to teach his course “Chaos Theory, Metamathematics and the Limits of Knowledge: A Scientific Perspective on Religion” (featured in the President's Report) at St. Xavier's College in Kolkata and St. Xavier's College in Mumbai.

Nikhil Balram, Engineering Advisory Board member and president and CEO of Ricoh Innovations Corporation has been awarded the prestigious Otto Schade Prize from the Society for Information Display for "...development of objective image-quality benchmarking methodology that helped bring world-class image quality to mainstream consumer displays."

The Summer Institute for Humanitarian Computing, a one-month Google-sponsored program for developing mobile applications to benefit underserved populations, will be offered to high school students by Santa Clara University's Frugal Innovation Lab and Computer Engineering Department. The program was announced in the San Jose Mercury News, here.

Tiny House Team Update: SCU's undergraduate team is preparing to begin construction of their 238 sq. ft. home on wheels. The electrical engineers have designed an off-grid system that meets usage and weight load limits, structural and thermal analyses are complete, and a budget is in place.