STUDENT SUCCESSES
Competitions
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
A team of Texas A&M University student engineers has broken tradition by putting a different kind of engine in the formula racecar it has designed and fabricated for two Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) competitions. Past teams won the Formula SAE Rookie of the Year award in 1999, the Formula SAE competition in 2000 and the Road & Track competitions in 2004 and 2005.
Concrete canoe
A little concrete couldn't slow our Aggie civil engineering students' smooth sail to success. The Texas A&M concrete canoe team made a clean sweep at the Concrete Canoe Regional contest in South Padre Island, Texas. The Aggies won first place in every event - design paper, final product, presentation and overall racing - and will advance to the national competition. View the concrete Canoe Team web site.
Bridge builders
Aggie bridge builders won first at regionals and advanced to nationals in the Student Steel Bridge Competition. Students from universities all over the country compete to construct a 1/10-scale model bridge designed to cross a river valley.
Human Powered Submarine
Aggies go to great depths to compete in the Human Powered Submarine contest sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Future Energy Challenge
This year, the Texas A&M team of 15 undergraduate students and five graduate advisers is developing a system that will provide power normally derived from a wall socket by using a clean energy source, such as a fuel cell. Finalists compete this August for prizes up to $25,000. In 2003, our team was a finalist in that year's challenge to create a fuel cell inverter.
Association for Computing Machinery
Our programming team won the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) South Central Regional Programming Competition. The team went on to compete against teams from all over the world at the International Finals in Shanghai, China.
Aggie Pullers
The 2005 Aggie Pullers' tractor has placed first in manufacturability at the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers' (ASABE) 2005 1/4-scale Tractor International Student Design Competition. The team of eight Texas A&M University students had designed and built the tow tractor over eight months for the competition.
International Student Offshore Design Competition
Aggie ocean engineering teams have placed second, third and fifth respectively in the 2005 International Student Offshore Design Competition (ISODC) finals. Nine teams applied to this year's award competition, with five teams from Texas A&M University and four from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the University of Michigan. A variety of designs were submitted, ranging from liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities to floating, production-storage and offloading (FPSO) units.
Autonomous vehicles
Texas A&M University and the University of California, Berkeley's Ghostrider was the first riderless motorcycle to try out for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) Grand Challenge, a 131.2-mile race through the Mojave Desert.
Clubs and Organizations
Aggie students organize, run petroleum engineering seminars for professionals worldwide
These students travel the globe organizing cutting-edge technology events and conducting business meetings with top engineers in the oil and gas industry.
Women in Nuclear — First student chapter in the nation
We have the largest nuclear engineering department in the country — and now the first student chapter in the nation of Women in Nuclear (WIN). Laura Strban, a senior radiological health engineering student and one of the founders of WIN's student chapter, first became interested in starting a student chapter after attending the WIN Intercontinental Conference in Las Vegas.
Texas Aggie Game Developers (TAGD)
Our game developers group started in July 2003 when computer science graduate student Jacob Foshee wanted to learn more about designing and creating computer games. He decided to start TAGD for like-minded students. "Through the mentoring of upperclassmen, young members will fare better in classes like computer graphics, networking and programming languages," Foshee said. View the Texas Aggie Game Developers' web site.
Zero-gravity research on NASA aircraft
Our student teams run experiments in zero-gravity via NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program (RGSFOP), which provides college students with opportunities to design, test, fly and evaluate their experiments in a "weightless" atmosphere.
Student Engineers' Council Societies
Students can join our student chapters of professional engineering associations and societies.
Activities
Aggie Satellite 1
Texas A&M students will one day build and launch their own satellite, if Dr. Helen Reed has anything to say about it. Reed, who is the new head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, plans to bring her student satellite program to Texas A&M next spring.
Mars Lander project
Working with design experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., a team of Aggie student engineers have worked out the parts and processes needed to send two landers the 100 million miles to Mars, land them, take samples of soil, rock and atmosphere, and return the samples safely to Earth. The samples will then be distributed to hundreds of research labs to see if they can detect signs of past or present life on Mars.
Unmanned aerial vehicle
Aerospace engineering students at Texas A&M University used what they learn to build an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that soared to a third-place finish in an international competition for UAVs.
Rocket launch
There's more to getting a rocket off the ground than lighting the fuse and getting out of the way. Just ask a team of Texas A&M University engineering students who launched their own rocket. Thirty engineering students from the Departments of Aerospace, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering began designing their rocket last fall as part of a multidisciplinary design course funded by the Boeing Co.
Biological and Agricultural engineering team projects
This year's crop of projects ranged from working out how to plug leaks in an earthen dam that contains a 65-acre lake and designing a cover for a soon-to-be-closed landfill to automating the final steps in ginning cotton.
Energy waste and productivity studies
Our Industrial Assessment Center employs about a dozen undergraduate and graduate students each semester. "Work with the IAC has given me an awareness of simple ways for all companies to save money in the form of energy savings, waste savings and productivity savings that I can take with me to my future employment," said senior chemical engineering major Cheryl Keel. Visit the IAC web site.
Wireless robots
Imagine meeting a three-wheeled pile of electronic gear whirring busily down the hall as you walk to your next class. The pile of electronic gear - known more formally to students and faculty as a mobile platform - is one of the main products of a course that acquaints students with the intricacies of designing and using wireless technology. "This class is open-ended," says Joseph Morgan, a professor in the Electronics Engineering Technology Program. "As the technology changes, the class changes with it."
Lunar vehicle design
A team of Texas A&M University student engineers got high marks from NASA engineers who reviewed the team¿s designs for a six-wheeled lunar excursion vehicle. Engineers reviewed the student engineers' designs for the lunar vehicle, produced as part of a yearlong mechanical engineering design course, during a formal review.
Space-shuttle launch safety
A Texas A&M University civil engineer and student civil engineer spent their summer at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., where they researched ways to decrease launch-pad debris that can collide with space shuttles during launches.
Civil engineering Survey Camp
The new Survey Camp is an elective, CVEN 403: Applied Civil Engineering Surveying, taught during two weeks in May. Students learn how surveyors measure and map tracts so civil engineers can correctly design structures for the tracts. They spend six full days in campus computer labs and five full days at Texas A&M Riverside Campus, formerly Bryan Army Air Base.
