November 2018 Five10 Report

Gary Walz (civil, environmental, and sustainable engineering adjunct professor) in collaboration with Universidad Católica de Córdoba, was the keynote speaker at the conference “Build Sustainable is to Build the Future” and guest lecturer in the Diploma program in “Sustainable Design and Construction” held in Córdoba, Argentina Oct. 24-28.

Yuling Yan (bioengineering) and a colleague from University of Paris are guest editors for a new Special Issue of Bioengineering on "Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for BCI/BMI." Bioengineering is an international open access journal published quarterly online by MDPI, a reputable publisher established in 1996 that has led the field in offering peer-reviewed, open access scientific journals. 

Share and win: As we prepare to launch construction on SCU's new STEM facilities, we want to capture your memories of our buildings—Bannan Engineering, Sullivan Engineering, and the Engineering Quad—throughout the years. Publish a public post or photo on our social media for a chance to win cool swag. Hurry, contest ends December 1! Details here.

Michael Canniffe '20 presented the Flomosys project, a flood monitoring system designed by SCU’s Internet of Things research Lab and Frugal Innovation Hub under the supervision of Behnam Dezfouli (computer engineering), at the Sensors Conference (Midwest). The system monitors the water level of Coyote Creek and Guadalupe Creek across more than 10 miles. Dezfouli received $24,900 funding from the Santa Clara Valley Water District for this project in Aug. 2018.

Chloe Loreen '21 (mechanical engineering major, aerospace engineering minor), with Amin Ghafooripour (civil, environmental and structural engineering) and a colleague from Canada, published a paper/technical note, "Tips for the Analysis and Construction of Semicircle Unbonded Post-Tensioned Flat Slab," in the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) newsletter. Find it here.

Huong Chau '19 (bioengineering) presented a poster, "Development of Classifier Models for Pore Size Characterization via Atomic Force Microscopy Analysis," in the Biomedical Imaging and Instrumentation Session at the National annual BMES conference in Atlanta, Georgia. She was co-advised by Maryam Mobed-Miremadi and Ashley Kim (bioengineering) and Richard Barber (physics).

Allison Kopf '11, student team leader of SCU's 3rd Place winning Solar Decathlon team and founder and CEO of Agrilyst, has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30! With $3.3 million in funding, her company helps growers forecast what crops need to be harvested in a 30-day period with 90 percent accuracy, and makes it easier to understand expected yield, number of units and revenue while reducing labor hours through automation.

Mentoring: On November 7, the School of Engineering held its quarterly Engineering Mentoring Reception. Approximately 20 industry mentors and 35 students attended.

Nam Ling (computer engineering), together with Zhouye Gu (Apple), Jianhua Zheng, and Chen-Xiong Zhang (Huawei/Hisilcon), was awarded a U.S. patent, “Method and Device for Providing Depth Based Block Partitioning in High Efficiency Video Coding,” U.S. patent publication number US10057586B2, on Aug. 21.

University Innovation Fellows: Payton Bradsky '19, Anthony Fenzl '20, Ruby Karimjee '21, and Ryan Lund '20 have completed training to join the University Innovation Fellows, a global program run by Stanford University that empowers student leaders to increase campus engagement with innovation, entrepreneurship, creativity and design thinking.

Help us find our super-engineers! Nominate candidates (yourself, included!) for the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award (see past winners). The highest honor bestowed by the School, the DEA Award recognizes graduates whose accomplishments in their professions, communities, and/or University services have set them apart. Find criteria and nomination form here.

Ahmed Amer (computer engineering and Markkula Center Emerging Issues Fellow) wrote an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle using a fable about postal delivery service to explain the problem with repealing net neutrality. Read it here.

Isabella Morales '20, Megan Sauter '20, and Lauren Serfas '20 facilitated a session on applying Human Centered Design Thinking in humanitarian engineering projects to over 70 attendees at the Engineers Without Borders USA National Conference in San Francisco, Nov. 9-10. Also attending the conference were Jonathan Borst '19, Shiyin Lim '19 and advisor Tonya Nilsson.

Allan Báez (Frugal Innovation Hub) recently met with representatives of six Jesuits Universities from North, Central, and South America with the goal of creating the first multidisciplinary Frugal Innovation Network of Latin-American Jesuit Universities.

Chris Kitts (mechanical engineering) received a $272K NSF award for development, fabrication, and use of a high temperature water sampling system to support "limits of life on Earth" studies at temps in the range of 100-200 degrees celsius. He also received more than $160K in industry grants for automated control and mission operations of a new industry spacecraft to be launched in 2019 and two robotic harvesting projects with local agricultural partners. 

Bronco Undergraduate Engineering Alums: Your gift to the School of Engineering or to your engineering department can help unleash $1 million in funding for SCU STEM from the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Foundation!! Please make a gift today, and choose your favorite engineering fund from the dropdown boxes!

Carol Reiley ’04 was the speaker at our recent Lunch with an Entrepreneur. An engineering entrepreneur, roboticist, and executive, she serves on the board of, advising, and/or investing in several companies ranging from AI to healthcare and diversity. She co-founded and is a board member of drive.ai, an artificial intelligence self-driving vehicle startup; and she cofounded Tinkerbelle Labs.

Shiyin Lim '19 (bioengineering) was awarded second place in the Undergraduate Student Poster Session for her research titled "The Short and Long Duration Effects of Mechanical Unloading on p21 Male Knockout Mice: MicroCT Analysis of the Femur." This work was presented at the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research Meeting.

Kamak Ebadi, electrical engineering Ph.D. candidate (expected graduation June 2019)  and doctoral research fellow in the Aerial Mobility group at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is part of the team that had a key role in developing autonomy solutions for the Mars InSight lander, and on Nov. 26 he assisted at JPL's Mission Control during the successful Mars landing!

Vijay Janapa Reddi '03 (electrical and computer engineering) has joined the faculty as associate professor in electrical engineering at Harvard University! Reddi specializes in computer architecture solutions for mobile computing (smartphones and wearables) and autonomous agents (ground service robots and UAVs). He also designs and implements solutions for cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT). Read more.