Students Ready to Hit the Road with High-Mileage Concept Car

Mechanical engineering seniors get ready to test drive their high-mileage car on a recent weekend in preparation for entering the Shell Eco-Marathon, April 15-18 in Fontana, California. Their goal is to squeeze more than 1,000 miles per gallon from the streamlined vehicle, which weighs only 120 pounds.

RECUV To Fly Unmanned Aircraft in National Tornado Study
CU-Boulder’s Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles will participate in a nationwide project exploring the origins, structure, and evolution of tornadoes by flying an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), also referred to as a UAV, into the early stages of a severe storm.

The collaborative Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment 2, or VORTEX2, will be conducted over a six-week period May 10 through June 13 over the central Great Plains. The project is the largest and most ambitious attempt to study tornadoes in history and will involve more than 50 scientists and 40 research vehicles, including 10 mobile radars.

RECUV has designed a UAV that weighs about 12 pounds with a ten-and-a-half-foot wingspan for the experiment, according to primary investigator Brian Argrow. The aircraft will be launched by the RECUV team and a meteorologist on one-hour flights into developing storms to measure air pressure, temperature, relative humidity and wind velocities.

The UAS experiment is funded by the Atmospheric Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation based on RECUV’s years of operational experience with unmanned aircraft systems. The team also includes CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Eric Frew, research assistant Thomas Aune, and doctoral students Jack Elston and Cory Dixon. The effort also includes collaborators from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, the University of Oklahoma, and Rasmussen Systems of Grand Junction, Colo.

CU Students Win 'I2P' Competition for Sustainable Engineering Venture in Rwanda
CU Engineering graduate students Evan Thomas and Max Gold won first-place in Purdue University’s national Idea-to-Product (I2P) Competition for Social Entrepreneurship April 4 with their economically sustainable development project in Rwanda.

The prize comes with $10,000 in support for their inline BYOW water treatment system and partnership with  Manna Energy Limited to design, install, and operate water purification systems, biogas generators, and high-efficiency cook stoves using United Nations carbon credits.

Thomas and Gold developed and implemented the BYOW system (which uses gravity, rapid sand filtration, and solar-powered ultraviolet light to disinfect drinking water) as part of the Engineers Without Borders-CU outreach project that has been under way in Rwanda for the last six years. Now they have joined with other EWB and U.S. AID volunteers to move the concept from charity to sustainable enterprise, at the same time pioneering the use of carbon credits for water treatment systems addressing public health needs.

Manna Energy (www.mannaenergy.org), which is chaired by NASA astronaut Ron Garan, aims to deploy 400 water purification systems and 300 biogas generators in Rwanda, reducing the demand for firewood as a fuel source and thereby generating as many as 9.5 million saleable Certified Emission Reductions (CERs or carbon credits). Revenues, which are expected to total more than $100 million, will be used to operate and maintain the systems, and to expand the model around the world.

Admitted Students Day Draws 2,300
A spring blizzard on April 4 resulted in a drop in attendance at CU-Boulder's Admitted Students Day from 3,800 to 2,300 visitors, but enrollment confirmations across the campus still increased 9 percent as a result of the event. About 450 of those who attended were from families whose students were admitted into the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

The Office of Admissions reported that on the day of the event, 149 students confirmed their intent to enroll at CU-Boulder next fall, including roughly 30 students who plan to study in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. In one week, the number of confirmed students in engineering jumped by 16 percent, from 478 to 555.

The engineering visitation program was coordinated by Nate Wright with assistance from many other CEAS staff, faculty, and student ambassadors. Thanks to everyone who helped out—numerous parents and the Office of Admissions indicated it was an excellent program.

Honors & Awards
Congratulations to the following individuals on their outstanding achievements:

Faculty
Bernard Amadei of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering has received Engineering News-Record’s 2009 Award of Excellence and was featured in the construction weekly’s cover story on March 30.

Will Medlin of chemical and biological engineering and Derek Reamon of mechanical engineering received the Boulder Faculty Assembly’s 2009 Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Bill Emery of aerospace engineering sciences received the BFA Excellence in Research Award.  He also was awarded the IEEE/GRSS Outstanding Service Award for 2008.

Staff
Matt Rhode, aerospace engineering sciences laboratory coordinator, was selected to receive the Chancellor's Employee of the Year Award.

Students
Eric Eason, a senior in applied mathematics, has won a Hertz Foundation Fellowship award for graduate study. The award, which pays for up to five years of graduate studies at the school of his choice, is valued at more than $250,000.

Amal Chandran and Nicholas Pedatella, graduate students in aerospace engineering sciences, received Outstanding Student Paper awards for their presentations at the fall 2008 meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Space Physics and Aeronomy Section. Their faculty advisors are Scott Palo and Kristine Larson, respectively.

Vicki Hsu, a sophomore in aerospace engineering sciences, has been awarded CU-Boulder’s Norlin Scholarship.

Laura Stiles, Christine Hartzell, and Laura Bower, graduate students in aerospace engineering sciences, have been awarded Amelia Earhart fellowships for next year.

Nathan Calvert, a BS/MS student in aerospace engineering sciences advised by Ryan Starkey, has been selected for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

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