Category Archives: Engineering

Engineering a Start-up

Engineering a start-up at University of California at San Diego:

Fifteen von Liebig-supported projects have been converted into startup companies. In the past two years alone, start-up companies that received von Liebig support have raised more than $10 million in capital. And even more discoveries have been licensed to telecommunications, biotechnology and other industry companies that are using the UCSD science to make new products or make their existing products better.

The center, started with a $10 million grant, has awarded a total of $2.4 million to 56 projects. An additional 25 projects have benefited from the center’s advisers. The return on investment has climbed steadily. The revenue UCSD received from the commercialization of discoveries out of the Jacobs School of Engineering has grown from $57,563 in 1999 to $602,713 in 2004, the most recent year for which figures were available.

Great stuff – this is the kind of thing that allows the ingenuity of engineers to benefit the economy and the engineers. Small focused efforts like this can have a huge long term impact, I believe. For those interested in building economic advantage through engineering education creating an entrepreneurial environment is a very important factor.

Leah Jamieson on the Future of Engineering Education

Leah Jamieson’s address, 2007 IEEE President and dean of the Purdue Engineering school, to DesignCon 2007. (link broken by DesignCon, so removed. How are organizations that seek to have people come to them to learn how to adopt good engineering practices still failing to basic things like keeping urls live forever?).

The future of engineering education: More questions than answers by Michael Santarini:

In addition, many academics estimate that the half-life of engineering knowledge is between two to seven years, Jamieson said. “I can tell you for us at the universities, if it’s less than five or certainly less than four [years] we’re going to get scared because it means students come in as freshmen and by the time they are done, half of what we’ve done for those first couple of years may or may not be relevant?” she said. “It’s a frightening thought, and so it means we have to keep asking ourselves, what are the parts that stay relevant, so that in fact the education is current after the students graduate or at least current on the day they do graduate.”

2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability

2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability:

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced today the winners of the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability. The contest sought innovative solutions for removing arsenic from drinking water that is slowly poisoning tens of millions of people in developing countries. Three prizes will be awarded from a field of more than 70 entries.
…
The Gold Award-winning SONO filter is a point-of-use method for removing arsenic from drinking water. A top bucket is filled with locally available coarse river sand and a composite iron matrix (CIM). The sand filters coarse particles and imparts mechanical stability, while the CIM removes inorganic arsenic. The water then flows into a second bucket where it again filters through coarse river sand, then wood charcoal to remove organics, and finally through fine river sand and wet brick chips to remove fine particles and stabilize water flow. The SONO filter is now manufactured and used in Bangladesh.

The system developed by the Silver Award-winning team is applied at a community’s well head. Each arsenic removal unit serves about 300 households. Water is hand-pumped into a fixed-bed column, where it passes through activated alumina or hybrid anion exchanger (HAIX) to remove the arsenic. After passing through a chamber of graded gravel to remove particulates, the water is ready to drink. This system has been used in 160 locations in West Bengal, India. The water treatment units, including the activated alumina sorbent, are being manufactured in India, and villagers are responsible for their upkeep and day-to-day operation. The active media are regenerated for re-use, and arsenic-laden sludge is contained in an environmentally safe manner with minimum leaching.

Biocomputing with Martyn Amos

The Jan 30th This Week in Science Podcast covers various topics including:

Today’s interview with Biocomputing expert, Martyn Amos, was a fascinating journey into the future of technology. What we consider computers today won’t be the computers of tomorrow, and computers will likely be integrated into all aspects of life using the miniaturization potential of DNA. While we are still far away from the realization of many aspects of biocomputing, it has come a long way from its humble beginnings.

Scientists and Engineers Without Borders

Building on the Doctors without Borders organization are two organizations: Science without Borders and Engineers without Borders.

Science Without Borders:

Scientists may not provide emergency relief in times of disaster, but the discipline has a major role to play in meeting the chronic needs of our planet: health, agriculture, environment, energy, and many more. By creating Scientists Without Borders, the Academy aims to facilitate synergies among institutions already committed to the UN Millennium Development Goals as well as to unleash the energy of thousands of scientists in academia and industry. With the benefit of the best and most current information, they can apply their efforts to training health workers and researchers in developing countries or devote part of their research efforts to address underserved global challenges.

Engineers Without Borders (USA):

The activities of EWB-USA range from the construction of sustainable systems that developing communities can own and operate without external assistance, to empowering such communities by enhancing local, technical, managerial, and entrepreneurial skills. These projects are initiated by, and completed with, contributions from the host community working with our project teams.

Educating the Engineer of 2020: NAE Report

Educating the Engineer of 2020:

The BS degree should be considered as a pre-engineering or “engineer in training” degree.

I am not convinced of this idea. It seems to me a BS degrees in engineering should be a full degree not some “pre” degree like pre-law. Obviously no engineering degree is an invitation to stop learning; life long learning is a requirement whether the engineering degree is earned in 4, 6, 8… years. Improving the life long learning methods is where effort should be focused in my opinion not in making the original degree take longer to earn.

The engineering education establishment should participate in efforts to improve public understanding of engineering and the technology literacy of the public and efforts to improve math, science and engineering education at the K-12 level.
NSF should collect or assist collection of data on program approach and student outcomes for engineering departments/schools so prospective freshman can

These seem like good ideas to me.

Other than trying to get people to buy the content that they provide for free I can’t understand why they present the material so poorly online. Once again basic web usability principles are lacking on their site.
Continue reading →

Robots for Space Exploration

Robot Subs in Space James Vlahos:

But now, after spending nearly three decades on the margins of the space industry, Stone is closer than he’s ever been to proving that caves are the best earthly training ground for exploring space. Backed by a $5-million grant from NASA, he is developing a robot called DepthX that may turn out to be the most advanced autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) ever. Like its inventor, DepthX is a caver, capable of navigating constrained, obstacle-filled environments. Its theoretical mission, though, is bold even by Stone’s standards: a hunt for extraterrestrial life on the Jovian moon of Europa.

A ‘Chunnel’ for Spain and Morocco

From the bustling waterfront of this African port city, Europe appears tantalizingly close: The coast of Spain shows on the horizon just nine miles away. Despite decades of dreaming, no one has been able to bridge the physical divide that opened between the two continents more than 5 million years ago, forming the geological bottleneck to the Mediterranean Sea.

In recent months, however, the governments of Morocco and Spain have taken significant steps to move forward with plans to bore a railroad under the muddy bottom of the Strait of Gibraltar. If built, the project would rank among the world’s most ambitious and complex civil engineering feats, alongside the Panama Canal and the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France.

More Microchip Breakthroughs

Intel, IBM separately reveal transistor breakthrough

In dueling announcements, Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. separately say they have solved a puzzle perplexing the semiconductor industry about how to reduce energy loss in microchip transistors as the technology shrinks to the atomic scale.

Each company said it has devised a way to replace problematic but vital materials in the transistors of computer chips that have begun leaking too much electric current as the circuitry on those chips gets smaller. Technology experts said it’s the most dramatic overhaul of transistor technology for computer chips since the 1960s
…
The problem is that the silicon dioxide used for more than 40 years as an insulator inside transistors has been shaved so thin that an increasing amount of current is seeping through, wasting electricity and generating unnecessary heat. Intel and IBM said they have discovered a way to replace that material with various metals in parts called the gate, which turns the transistor on and off, and the gate dielectric, an insulating layer, which helps improve transistor performance and retain more energy.

Entrepreneurial Engineers

Business Leader Says Today’s Engineers Have to Be Entrepreneurial:

“Every engineer and scientist entering the job market today needs to be entrepreneurial, whether or not they plan to start their own business,” says Donna Novitsky, partner at venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures and adjunct professor in the School of Engineering. “It’s no longer an optional job qualification. It’s a ticket to entry in leading companies, even for undergrads.”

Strong words. A great resource mentioned in the article Stanford Technology Ventures Program Educators Corner, includes a large number of podcasts and short (2 – 10 minute video webcasts):

Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP) Educators Corner is a free online archive of entrepreneurship resources for teaching and learning. The mission of the project is to support and encourage faculty around the world who teach entrepreneurship to future scientists and engineers, as well as those in management and other disciplines.