Green Engineering Minor: it’s a self-explanatory name. Even if you’ve never heard of this minor before, you can guess part of its focus. (hint: It starts with “envi-” and ends with “-ronment.”) Nonetheless, there’s much about the minor that you probably don’t know: how it started, what’s required, and whether or not it’s the right fit for your engineering education. The green engineering minor began as a major concentration in 2001, initiated by a small group of faculty from the College of Engineering, and it evolved into a fully-fledged minor in 2008. However, it is not under the jurisdiction of any one department. It is both separate and interdisciplinary. Correspondingly, Dr. Sean McGinnis is the Program Director, and every major has an advisor in green engineering. Dr. Sean McGinnis came to work at Virginia Tech at the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic year. The Green Engineering position, as he put it, “was a perfect fit, since it allowed me to focus on this topic full time as well as teach the concepts to the next generation of engineers.”

The green engineering minor began as a major concentration in 2001, initiated by a small group of faculty from the College of Engineering, and it evolved into a fully-fledged minor in 2008.

Dr. Sean McGinnis came to work at Virginia Tech at the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic year. The Green Engineering position, as he put it, “was a perfect fit, since it allowed me to focus on this topic full time as well as teach the concepts to the next generation of engineers.” As an undergraduate, Dr. Sean McGinnis studied Chemical and Materials Science Engineering at the University of Minnesota; he received a PhD in MSE from Stanford University. His green engineering background came less from his formal education, and more from his seven years of employment at the Spectacle Lens Group, where “it was a corporate priority to consider energy use, emissions to air and water, health and safety of chemicals in products and processes, and green engineering to reduce risk, reduce costs, and improve the product and processes.” That was where he became fascinated with the subject, “I really wanted to find ways to incorporate these concepts into my work full time since I felt it was critical work that was mostly overlooked in engineering.”

Read more in our May 2012!

When you ask the average freshman engineer here at Virginia Tech to list all the engineering majors that the school offers, he or she will likely rattle off what they learned in their introduction to engineering classes: “chemical, mechanical, industrial, civil, environmental, electrical, computer, and mining.” However, many students don’t seem to realize that Virginia Tech also contains a School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences (SBES). While there isn’t an undergraduate program for it yet, SBES is becoming an increasingly popular field for master’s and PhD degrees.

So what exactly does a biomedical engineer do? We already have doctors to do all the medical stuff for us, right? Well, a biomedical engineer’s job is to make the tools that help your doctor do his or her job correctly. The list includes everything from Band-Aids and inhalers to complicated, life-saving devices like pacemakers and artificial hearts. Biomedical engineers are even working on regrowing entire internal organs using stem cells for tissue transplants. To give you an idea of just how groundbreaking biomedical engineers’ work can be, a team of researchers in Italy have already developed corneal transplants using stem cells to help those with chemical burns, literally giving sight to the blind.

With all the innovative work coming out of Virginia Tech’s faculty and students involved in biomedical research, it’s safe to say that VT's School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences is truly sticking the age-old Virginia Tech motto — “invent the future.”

Read more in our May 2012 issue!

In recognition of her work, the National Science Foundation awarded Matusovich with a Faculty Early Career Development Grant.

When people think of Virginia Tech, they usually think of engineering, and for good reason. Numerous reports have shown that this school is one of the top public universities in the country to get an education in engineering, and it’s all thanks to people like Dr. Holly Matusovich. Currently a faculty member in the Engineering Education Department, Matusovich teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses, and I was lucky enough to take one of her classes during my freshman year. I recently sat down with my former professor to talk about her newly awarded grant from the National Science Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to study how students are motivated to learn difficult engineering thermodynamics concepts, as well as faculty motivation in teaching those same concepts.
Dr. Matusovich’s journey to her current “dream job” was a long road with a variety of different engineering experiences. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering and began her career as an air pollution control consultant. After four years of writing reports, she followed in the footsteps of her father and got her master’s degree in Material Science with a concentration in Metallurgy. After completing her master’s, she worked for Alcoa in Indiana at a facility that manufactures aluminum extrusions for aerospace applications. Even though she enjoyed orking for Alcoa, she didn’t feel that it was what she wanted to do for the rest of her career. The aspect of her job she enjoyed most was talking to people and explaining concepts. Because she was already located in Indiana, she enrolled in a PHD program in Engineering Education at Purdue University, which she completed in 2008

Read more in our May 2012 issue!

A 2013 Chevy Malibou (shown above) will be used in the EcoCAR2 competition.

“Virginia Tech wins 1st Place overall in year three of EcoCAR Challenge!” The avid EF reader may recall
a similar article from the September 2011 issue, touting the numerous successes the Hybrid Electric Vehicle Team (HEVT) of Virginia Tech had at EcoCAR:The Next Challenge. I’ll spare you the list of 14 different top 3 finishes the team was awarded: let’s just say they set the bar pretty high. With sweeping successes in such a recent event, you may find yourself wondering, “What’s next?” The answer is EcoCAR 2: Plugging In to the Future. EcoCAR 2, like its predecessor, is a three-year competition in which 15 teams from the United States and Canada take a gasoline powered vehicle and implement an assortment of advanced propulsion technologies and alternative fuels, simultaneously increasing fuel-efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The HEVT is comprised of five different sub-teams: mechanical, electrical, controls, business, and outreach. When asked to identify a few of the largest challenges that EcoCAR 2 poses as compared to last year’s competition, the first answer out of the team leadership’s mouth: “SPACE”. For the EcoCAR challenge, teams were provided with a 2009 Chevy EcoCAR, a roomy crossover SUV with plenty of passenger seating and cargo space to spare—not the case for EcoCAR 2. This time around, General Motors will provide each of the teams with a 2013 Chevy Malibu. The new sedan platform is an improvement in aerodynamics and customer acceptability, but offers significantly less space to house all of the subsystems
necessary to bring this hybrid to life.

Read more in our May 2012 issue!

ABSTRACT

Stress and sedentary form of living poses huge health concerns. Various economic and social aspects restrict people from visiting specialized exercise centers to keep fit or while in rehabilitation regimes. Recently there has been a considerable shift towards the use of home-based health technologies, which inevitably implies use of computing interfaces. For use in such areas, a more intuitive natural user-interface is desirable. Commercial gaming systems like Nintendo WiiFit present a decent solution, but the motion tracking needs more accuracy. The present paper discusses the future touch-free human-computer interfaces and their use in home based health technologies.

Continue reading Touch Free Interfaces for Home Based Health Technologies

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