April 2017

Students raced against the clock to invent new technology and innovations to help improve veterinary patient outcomes and pet life as a whole at the latest Aggies Invent. Veterinary care is constantly evolving but isn’t perfect, there are many issues veterinarians face on a daily basis that can be improved. Teams of randomly-grouped students worked together on their needs statement, giving each group a different problem to solve.

With a professional career spanning more than 35 years, Matt Sunseri ’81, the president and CEO of Zeus Enterprises LLC., has had his fair share of experience in the nuclear engineering industry. Sunseri graduated from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science in nuclear engineering, and has since served in a variety of industry roles. Now he is transitioning into an advisory role with the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M, hoping students and faculty in the department will benefit from his years of experience.

In April, Ascend Performance Materials announced that company president and chief operating officer, Phil McDivitt ’87, was promoted to president, chief executive officer and member of the board. McDivitt is a graduate of the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, and currently sits on the department’s advisory council.

The Texas A&M University College of Engineering honored six alumni during the 2018 Outstanding Alumni Awards Banquet. Receiving the Outstanding Alumni Honor Award were Quentin Baker ’78, Peter C. Forster ’63, Jay Graham ’92, Stephanie G. Hertzog ’96 and Carl F. Jaedicke ’73. Receiving the Outstanding Early Professional Achievement Alumni Award was Lieutenant Colonel Aaron Tucker ’12.

The focus of the fifth annual Smart Grid Workshop on the Texas A&M University campus was using smart grids big data. The workshop was organized by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s (TEES) Smart Grid Center after receiving a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Big Data Spokes Program to extend collaboration and innovation using big data for the smart power grid area.

Former prisoners who graduated from the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) recently visited the Texas A&M University College of Engineering’s Zachry Leadership Program students. During the session, the students learned about the challenges former prisoners face, the recidivism problem and how they could use the lessons they’ve learned about business strategy to help inmates in the program develop business plans.

Dr. Emina Soljanin ‘94, professor at Rutgers University, presented her research about codes for data storage system during the Leaders and Innovators Speaker Series seminar in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Robyn Woollands was selected by the Association of Former Students for a 2017 Distinguished Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Research – Doctoral.

Mauricio Coen, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been awarded an Aggies Commit to Graduate and Professional Student Education Experiences Fellowship. He will use the $1,500 award to help fund expenses for the A3DPT-Mars: Advantages of 3-D Printing Technology to Operations in Future Human Exploration of Mars experiment, which is part of the Poland Mars Analog Simulation (PMAS) 2017.

A researcher with the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University is working to create the next generation of computer-aided tools for enabling conceptual design – an undertaking instrumental in catering to the ever-increasing demand for product innovation.

Graduate students Nima Jalili, Rachael Muschalek and Landon Nash from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University have each been awarded the Association of Former Students (AFS) Distinguished Graduate Student Award.

A team of researchers from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University is collaborating to 4-D print nickel-titanium shape memory alloys.

On Friday, April 21, 2017, thousands of Aggies descended on the Texas A&M University campus to participate in the annual Muster ceremony. The time-honored tradition serves as a celebration of the past, present and future Aggie family. One of the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering’s very own was honored at this year’s Muster. In August 2016, Texas A&M lost a true visionary of the field when Dr. Christodoulos "Chris" A. Floudas passed away while on vacation in Greece with his family.

Dr. Edward Dougherty, a pioneer in the study of translational genomics via the use of engineering techniques, has authored his 18th book, The Evolution of Scientific Knowledge: From Certainty to Uncertainty, that focuses on the background and history of epistemology (the theory of knowledge) in science and engineering.

What started as a whiteboard concept nearly 20 years ago by Dr. Duncan Maitland, the Stewart & Stevenson Professor I in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, could soon turn into a revolutionary product for the medical industry for treating vascular problems like aneurysms.

Researchers from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University, with custom cyber manufacturing, use the technology behind origami and kirigami manufacturing. The goal is to give nonmanufacturers the ability to design and customize products such as chairs, lamps and desks for their own use.

Stephanie Wilcox, an undergraduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, was awarded first place in the technology and engineering poster presentation category at the Emerging Researchers National (ERN) Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), held in Washington, D.C.

Texas A&M University will be hosting the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) regional workshop and camp, May 22-26.

Katie Ford​, a Ph.D. student in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, is among the recipients of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), which were announced in March.

Four professors in the Department of Biomedical engineering at Texas A&M University have been awarded funds to participate in the 2017-2018 AggiE_Challenge program.

Researchers with the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University are taking complex interactions between drops of water and material surfaces and conducting fundamental research to understand why some droplets adhere to surfaces and why others don’t.

Dr. Moo-Hyun Kim, a professor in the Department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been elected a Fellow of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME).

Jake Carrow, a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, was recently honored with the 2017 Phil Gramm Fellowship. The award of $5,000 will help to support Carrow’s research as he pursues his degree in Dr. Akhilesh Gaharwar’s research group.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded fellowships through the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) to second-year doctoral student Paul Gordon and senior undergraduate students Hannah Pearce, Mikayla Barry and Jane Frederick.

The Grand Challenge Scholars Program (GCSP) at Texas A&M University is a selective three-year program offered to sophomore students with the intent to attract, retain and graduate future leaders who are equipped to solve engineering grand challenges facing our society today and in the future. A group of 24 scholars from various engineering departments were selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of the program.

Dr. Ramesh Talreja will be honored at the Kenneth L. Clinton Awards luncheon April 20 for his work with the Brazil Study Abroad Program in aerospace engineering. This award is given to faculty that participate in and help facilitate study abroad programs with research, teaching and service.

Dr. Assel Aitkaliyeva ’12, a graduate of the materials science and engineering department, has been appointed as a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The University of Florida.

Traci Sarmiento, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, earned second place in the graduate oral presentation category during Student Research Week (SRW) 2017.

The joint chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Power Electronics Society, Power and Energy Society and Industry Applications Society (IEEE PELS-PES-IAS) at Texas A&M University was named the highest performing student chapter in North America and placed fourth across the globe by the IEEE PES.

Efstratios (Stratos) Pistikopoulos, TEES Distinguished Research Professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, was recently appointed deputy director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute. In this role, he will administer the institute’s initiatives with manufacturing as well as its academic programs, and will participate in the overall management of the institute.

Imagine walking into your college classroom and donning a pair of virtual reality goggles to learn the day’s lesson. If Dr. Darren Hartl has his way, that will be a reality in the near future. He is one of the faculty members in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University bringing virtual reality (VR) into the realm of research and teaching.

The Aggie Coding Club (ACC) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University is a student organization bringing together like-minded individuals to create a center for pursuing software based projects as well as networking with companies and individuals.APRIL 10, 2017

A team of Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) researchers has been selected for a potential award by NASA to lead research into commercially viable civil supersonic transport aircraft that meet noise and efficiency requirements for overland flight. Put simply, their research is on designing an aircraft that can modify its shape in real time in order to optimize for fuel efficiency or quiet flight as the flight phase and conditions change.

The Texas A&M University College of Engineering took part in Texas A&M’s presence at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin last month, bringing several exciting aspects of the college to visitors to the ‘Texas A&M House’ at the Hotel Van Zandt in downtown Austin.

Whitney Souery, an undergraduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been selected for a fellowship at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Cardiovascular Center (FCVC).

At the most recent Aggies Invent, several students in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University worked to solve the infrastructural and architectural problems of the future.

General Motors (GM) and SAE International announced Wednesday that Texas A&M University has been selected as one of eight North American universities to compete in the AutoDrive Challenge over the next three years.

Dr. Homero Castaneda has been appointed a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Committee on Connector Reliability for Offshore Oil and Natural Gas Operations. Castaneda is an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University and director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s National Corrosion and Materials Reliability Center.

For the second year in a row, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University hosted a special seminar honoring Dr. Claude Shannon’s contribution to information theory at Texas A&M’s Physics and Engineering Festival.

Maria Troyanova-Wood, a graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been awarded the Philanthropic Education Organization (PEO) Scholar Award for the 2017-18 academic year.

Last week, top researchers from across the state of Texas studying systems, controls and robotics visited Texas A&M University to participate in the fourth annual Texas Systems Day.

Two students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University are recipients of Vertical Flight Foundation (VFF) scholarships from the American Helicopter Society (AHS). The students work in the Advanced Vertical Flight Laboratory under the guidance of Dr. Moble Benedict, assistant professor in the department.

Students in the Department of Ocean Engineering at Texas A&M University were rewarded for their hard work inside and outside the classroom with awards given during the annual meeting jointly hosted by the Marine Technology Society (MTS) and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME).

Shahin Boluki, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, was named one of the three winners of the Young Scientist Excellence Award at the 14th Annual MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS) Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Formula SAE car up for auction, benefits students

Sam Gwydir, senior in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, presented at the 2017 AsiaBSDCon on his knowledge of FreeBSD, a UNIX-like operating system similar to Mac OS X, or GNU/Linux. AsiaBSDCon2017 was held March 9-12 in Tokyo, Japan at the Tokyo University of Science.

Dr. Anthony Guiseppi-Elie, head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, director of the Biomedical Engineering Division of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and TEES Professor at Texas A&M University, has been elected chair of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

Makiah Eustice, a junior in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been selected as a Brooke Owens Fellow. The Brooke Owens Fellowship Program awards internships and senior mentorships to exceptional undergraduate women seeking careers in aviation or space exploration.

Dr. Rodney Bowersox is one of 13 distinguished researchers from across the United States to be named a 2017 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow by the Department of Defense (DoD). The recipients will receive up to $3 million over five years for research.

Jin Li, a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, has received the 2016 Materials Research Society (MRS) Graduate Student Silver Award. Li is the third graduate student from Texas A&M to be selected to receive this award in the past 10 years.

Competing against more than 70 schools from seven countries, the Texas A&M University SAE Aero Design Team in the Department of Aerospace Engineering brought back several awards from the 2017 SAE Aero Design West competition held in Fort Worth, Texas, March 10-12.

Dr. Mary Preston McDougall, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been selected to receive the 2017 Texas A&M University Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award.

The Conference for Protective Relay Engineers kicks off its 70th annual meeting at Texas A&M University this week. The event is the longest continually running industry conference at Texas A&M.

Members of Women in Materials Science (WIMS) are reaching out to students of all ages to educate them about the field and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University

A research team at Texas A&M University has uncovered a physical mechanism that may help answer one of the major questions concerning the origin of life, “How did the building blocks form?”