Category Archives: Universities

Science and Engineering Degrees – Career Success

Fortune magazine has selected the 50 most powerful women in business and selected 4 rising stars. It is another example (granted just an anecdote) illustrating that science and engineering degrees can pave the way to career success (also see: Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering).

Shona Brown, Senior Vice President, Business Operations, Google, has a bachelor of computer systems engineering degree from Carleton University in Canada and a master’s degree in economics and philosophy from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. She received her Ph.D. and Post-Doctorate from Stanford University’s Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management. Our management blog mentioned her last month: Chaos Management (by design) at Google – and her book, Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos.

Adriane Brown, President and CEO, Transportation Systems, Honeywell. Degree: environmental health from Old Dominion University.

Padmasree Warrior, EVP, Chief Technology Officer, Motorola – “received a M.S. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University, and a B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in New Delhi, India.”
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Academic Positions in Singapore

A friend shared this with me and I decided to post the opportunities here. The National University of Singapore is looking for a Head of Department and faculty in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Feel free to apply directly, or let me know and I can put you in touch with my friend.

The National University of Singapore is ranked in the top 25 universities in the world by the Times (newspaper in London). The top 10 are:

Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge University
Oxford University
Stanford University

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Discoveries by Accident

‘Failed’ experiment produces a bacterial Trojan horse by Katie Weber. Interestingly the usefulness of Penicillin, the most popular bacteria fighting agent, was discovered by accident (and then a smart scientist learning from the accident and applying that knowledge to creating an incredibly useful medication).

As he was puzzling out why what should have been a routine procedure wouldn’t work, he made a discovery that led to the creation of a new biological tool for destroying bacterial pathogens – one that doesn’t appear to trigger antibiotic resistance.

The discovery also led to the startup of a promising new biotechnology firm that has already brought Wisconsin a dozen new, high-paying, highly skilled jobs.

This is yet another example of the power of scientists and engineers to boost the economy and society at large.

Google 2007 Anita Borg Scholarship

USA: Open to female, undergraduate seniors or graduate students at a university in the United States studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related technical fields. Apply by January 15, 2007. The scholarship recipients will each receive a $10,000 scholarship for the 2007-2008 academic year. Remaining finalists will receive $1,000 each. Both groups will visit Google headquarters April 5-7, 2007 for workshops with a series of speakers, panelists, breakout sessions and social activities.

Europe: Similar to the above, apply by January 12th, 2007

UC-Berkeley Course Videos

Google offers a huge number of University of California, Berkeley course videos. They include full courses on subjects including:

Physics for Future Presidents (with 26 lectures by Richard A. Muller including: Atoms and Heat; Gravity and Satellites; Radioactivity; and Electricity and Magnetism)
Search Engines: Technology, Society and Business (including a lecture by Sergey Brin: Search, Google, and Life
Electrical Engineering 213 / Applied Science & Technology 210 with 31 lectures on Soft X-Rays and Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation by David T. Attwood

Great stuff and hopefully much more to follow. A great example of open access education material. It is a bit surprising that it is not easier to navigate the videos to find what you might be interested in. The videos are not great quality (like all of Google Video) but the content is great. And it seems likely (hopefully) 5 years from now we will get great quality such videos from many schools.
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China Invests More in Science and Engineering

China to invest 6 bln yuan in scientific infrastructure

The Chinese central government will invest at least 6 billion yuan (750 million U.S. dollars) in major scientific infrastructure projects in the next five years.

China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced Thursday that the 12 major projects include an accelerator-based neutron source, a large area space telescope, marine research vessels, a space remote sensing system and other key projects.

The NDRC will invest a further 5 billion yuan (625 million U.S. dollars) in the third phase of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ (CAS) innovation project, building or upgrading 50 national engineering institutes and 100 national labs, and supporting 300 national authorized enterprise tech centers.

Purdue Graduate Fellows Teach Middle School Science

Purdue to break ground on teaching center for improving science and engineering education.

The $10 million Discovery Learning Center, slated for completion in 2008, will focus on teaching techniques and environments conducive to learning. Also a focal point will be the way people learn best. An emphasis will be placed on science, technology, engineering and mathematics education, also known as the STEM disciplines.
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Wilella Burgess, managing director of the Discovery Learning Center, said projects like GK12 help make science seem more reachable for students in the primary grades.

“A lot of these kids don’t know there is such a thing as graduate school and it lets them meet scientists and grad students and learn that they’re not all weird, nerdy people,” she said. “It also lets classroom teachers have the access to cutting edge research.”

The Purdue Discovery Learning Center Gk-12 program brings graduate students to middle schools. Graduate “fellows will develop lesson plans and teach interdisciplinary-focused experiments geared toward science in everyday life.”

Yale to Provide Videos of Courses Online

Yale to Make Select Courses Available on the Internet

Yale University is producing digital videos of selected undergraduate courses that it will make available for free on the Internet through a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The Open Educational Resources Video Lecture Project has received $755,000 for an 18-month pilot phase. The project will create multidimensional packages—including full transcripts in several languages, syllabi, and other course materials—for seven courses and design a web interface for these materials, to be launched in the fall of 2007. If the venture proves successful, Yale hopes to significantly expand its online offerings over the next few years. The new venture joins a growing number of university-based initiatives that use the Internet to make educational materials widely available.

Good news. I hope, and expect that, they will do a better job with the web usability of their offering than others providing educational material online have recently.

Related: Open Educational Resources (OER) from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – Open Course Ware from Japan – Open Access Legislation – Berkeley and MIT courses online

Sports Science Open Access Journal

Sport Science is a Peer-Reviewed Site for Sport Research (open access). An interesting recent publication: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Rowing Faster by Stephen Seiler:

Improvements in rowing technique have increased boat speed by reducing boat yaw, pitch and roll, and by improving the pattern of force application. New tools for real-time measurement and feedback of boat kinematics and force patterns are opening new approaches to training of individual rowers and to selection of rowers for team boats.

They also moderate a email list with items of interest including academic positions in areas such as: Mechanical Engineering, focusing on Biomechanics; Sports Physiologist; Exercise and Sport Science.

Engine on a Chip – the Future Battery

micro engine - battery replacement

Engine on a chip promises to best the battery

MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios and other electronic devices.
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The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second — 100 times faster than those in jet engines.

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