Possibilities Ahead for Engineers

Possibilities and challenges ahead for engineers

To that end, engineering institutions should avoid focusing solely on lecture-based courses and ensure that students participate in team projects, research and experiential learning. Students should also learn communication skills and gain understanding of ethics and social responsibility, business organization, innovation and product development, in addition to engineering fundamentals, Vest said.
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The Senate is now working on legislation that would invest in making the United States more competitive with other nations when it comes to science and engineering education. The National Competitiveness Investment Act is based on recommendations from a recent federal report called “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” which argued that science and engineering education is vital to U.S. economic interests.

Previous posts on proposed legislation: Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math – Proposed Legislation on Science and Education – Science and Engineering Innovation Legislation – The Innovation Agenda – Science and Engineering Fellowships Legislation

Open Access Engineering Journals

Engineering Economics – Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania
Crosstalk – the Journal of Defense Software Engineering – United States Government
Information Technology Journal – ANSInet
BioMedical Engineering OnLine – BioMed Central
Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering – The University of Melbourne, Australia
International Journal of Online Engineering
Journal of Chemical Engineering of Japan – The Society of Chemical Engineers, Japan
Electronic Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
International Commission of Agricultural Engineering – CIGR

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The Emperor of Math

Shing-Tung Yau: The Emperor of Math by Dennis Overbyte

For nine months of the year, Dr. Yau is a Harvard math professor, best known for inventing the mathematical structures known as Calabi-Yau spaces that underlie string theory, the supposed “theory of everything.”
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But the other three months he is what his friend Andrew Strominger, a Harvard physicist, called “the emperor ascendant of Chinese science,” one of the most prominent of the “overseas Chinese” who return home every summer to work, teach, lobby, inspire and feud like warlords in an effort to advance world-class science in China.

K-12 Engineering Education

Program aims to steer students into engineering (site broke the link so I removed it – poor usability):

Throughout the year, they will use the same tools that engineers use in the field to learn concepts of mechanics and simple machines.
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Across the country, 27 universities have partnered with Project Lead the Way, a non-profit organization, to train high school and middle school educators planning to teach the program.
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Helm said one student in the program in Texas designed a thin and flexible life vest to fit more comfortably over foul-weather gear worn by shrimpers on the Gulf Coast.

“The Coast Guard liked it so much they bought the idea from her,” she said.

Learn more about Project Lead The Way and see more posts on other such projects: Middle School Engineers (another post on project lead the way which includes many related links) – Directory of Science Education Sites – Engineering Education Program for k-12 – Inspiring Students to be Engineers

Singapore Engineering Week

Students at Singapore Engineering Week

See Singapore Engineering Week activities at Singapore Polytechnic. If you located in Singapore you can attend but even if not the site offers interesting ideas for others.

Events include: Fun with Small Practical Circuits where “participants will develop a project using basic electrical/electronic devices such as resistors, transistors, basic sensors, etc.”

Solar Toy Car where: participants will learn the principle of photovoltaic technology and build a mini-solar car through the hands-on exercise.

Engineering of Customised Foot Insole:

Currently, the static deformation or foot shape is used in customised insole design. However, such method cannot accurately describe the behaviour of the foot during locomotion as dynamic deformation differs significantly from static deformation. Participants will have the opportunity to determine the differences between static and dynamic deformation of the plantar tissue and how this information can be used to engineer customised foot insoles.

Inside Live Red Blood Cells

Technique reveals inner lives of red blood cells:

For the first time, researchers at MIT can see every vibration of a cell membrane, using a technique that could one day allow scientists to create three-dimensional images of the inner workings of living cells.
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Soon, the researchers hope to extend their view beyond the cell membrane into the cell, to create images of what is happening inside living cells — including how cells communicate with each other and what causes them to become cancerous.

“One of our goals is create 3D tomographic images of the internal structure of a cell,” said Michael Feld, MIT professor of physics and director of the Spectroscopy Lab. “The beauty is that with this technique, you can study dynamical processes in living cells in real time.”

Example of what that will look like: The Inner Life of a Cell – Animation – ok actually that level of detail may still be fairly far away 🙂

MIT Faculty Study Recommends Significant Undergraduate Education Changes

A 2 year study by faculty provides recommendations for undergraduate education at MIT.

HigherEd article – When Knowledge Overtakes a Core:

Updating the traditional core of science subjects, giving students more choices and more hands-on science. The shift would end MIT’s long-standing practice of having all students take six common science courses — a change that institute officials say is necessary because the explosion of scientific knowledge has made it impossible to cover all basics in any introductory sequence.
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MIT’s reforms, if adopted, would represent the most significant overhaul of its curriculum in decades. The changes could be influential far beyond Cambridge, given the institute’s prominence in science and engineering education.

I think making science and engineering more hands on is a good thing.

Google India Looking for Engineers

Google not finding right talent in India to suit its needs

Google, which is considered to have a very low attrition rate even in the high-job-hopping Indian IT space, has found it more challenging to hire certain talent in India as compared to other parts of the world, the company’s Founder-Director Kavitark Ram Shriram admitted recently.

The Indian origin founding board member of Google and a well-known venture capitalist said at an ‘investing in India’ conference in San Francisco, “I know first hand that we have had a bit more of a challenge trying to hire engineers for Google in Bangalore compared to the other parts of the world.”

Google even has a we’re hiring link on the Google India home page.

Recent articles also point to other companies having trouble finding Indian engineers to fill all the jobs they hoped to fill.

Inventor for Hire

Inventor for hire, Pioneer Press, Minnesota (update – sigh the newspaper removed the page, argh! poor usability):

Nicholas Powley, an MIT graduate, quit his engineering job at Guidant to work as a consultant and an inventor.
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“My whole goal is to make my life user-friendly so I can devote all my time to thinking,” he said.

One of Powley’s former professors calls him a “nouveau nerd,” someone with not only the requisite engineering knowledge, but also lots of people skills and business savvy.

Woodie Flowers, an engineering professor at MIT for 40 years, said America needs more Nick Powleys if it is to succeed against overseas competition. Engineers can no longer be the equation-spouting geek loners in the back room, he said.

Good luck Nicholas. The combination of engineering knowledge and business acumen is exactly what drive economic success and why those striving for healthy economies try to create as many Nicolas’ as possible. The article is very good but why do people write such articles without links to relevant web sites site still? Learn more at the Open Design Forum web site.

Update, Jan 2007 (update – sigh the newspaper removed this page too, argh!):

Powley has been inundated with requests from ordinary people who want him to help them make their invention ideas become reality since he was profiled Oct. 15 on the front page of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. But he said one beguiling request came from a group of top executives and sales people in the health care industry who read the story about the MIT graduate: Come work for them as the head of research and development for a new medical products company they want to create in New York City.

“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” Powley said last week as he, his mother, his girlfriend and his business partner on a medical catheter cover he helped develop five years ago were driving to New York for a weekend business dinner. Powley said his partners want to remain unnamed for now. He was reluctant to say how much the position would pay him but he did say it was “fabulous.”

China Robot Expo

Teachers view a detective robot during the Robot Teaching and Research Seminar of Chinese Colleges and Universities in Beijing

2006 China Robot Expo

Robot research seminar held in Beijing (photo shown here): Teachers view a detective robot during the Robot Teaching and Research Seminar of Chinese Colleges and Universities in Beijing, China.

2006 China Robot Expo

Please comment if you know of other web resources on this meeting.