Universities Focus on Economic Benefits

In the USA, Georgia Tech Focuses on Competitive Challenges

A leader in science and engineering education and with a research program totaling more than $400 million per year, Georgia Tech is a major developer of science and technology innovations. Building on these new technologies and collaborating with like-minded organizations, the Enterprise Innovation Institute will work with the private sector to apply innovations to real marketplace needs

and in India, Innovation through industry-academia tie-up

The Samtel Display Technology Research Centre at IIT Kanpur, the Micro-electronics Research Centre funded by Semiconductor and EDA companies at IIT Kharagpur, the Automotive Research Centre at IIT Madras, IBM’s Research Lab at IIT Delhi and the HP Lab at IIIT-Bangalore are examples of academia-industry partnerships.

Middle School Math

228 middle school students compteted in the prestigious individual MATHCOUNTS competition. Daesun Yim of West Windsor, NJ won the national champion title and the $8,000 Donald G. Weinert Scholarship, a trip to U.S. Space Camp and a notebook computer by answering:

A jar contains 8 red balls, 6 green balls and 24 yellow balls. In order to make the probability of choosing a yellow ball from the jar on the first selection equal to1/2, Kerry will add x red balls and y green balls. What is the average of x and y?

Answer: 5

In the team competition, Virginia captured the title of National Team Champions. Team members include Jimmy Clark of Falls Church, Divya Garg of Annandale, Brian Hamrick of Annandale, Daniel Li of Fairfax and coach Barbara Burnett of Falls Church.

Read more about the 2006 competition. Watch video highlights from the 2005 competition.

MATHCOUNTS is a national enrichment, coaching and competition program that promotes middle school mathematics achievement through grassroots involvement in every U.S. state and territory.

Shortage of Petroleum Engineers

Talent Shortage Slows Oil Tech

There’s an extreme shortage of experienced petroleum engineers,” said Tariq Ahmad, a petroleum engineer consultant who has been in the business for 28 years. “The technology is there, but if you don’t have the people who can run the technology, what’s the use? It’s a major, major problem.”

A total of 2,412 students are enrolled in petroleum engineering undergraduate programs in the United States this year, according to Lloyd Heinze, chair of the petroleum engineering department at Texas Tech University. That compares with 11,014 students enrolled in petroleum engineering programs in 1983.

Related posts:

Science and the City

Science and the City, from the New York Academy of Sciences, serves to show how much all of us outside of New York City miss, but, also offers value to those away from NYC. Those of you lucky enough to be in New York City can find an amazing array of science related activities. For example this week you could choose from:

  • Making Chinese Medicine Modern at Columbia University Medical Center
  • Squishy Gel Phases as Templates for Nanostructured Materials at the City College of New York
  • The Beginner’s Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize at the New York Academy of Sciences
  • This Just In: The Latest News from the Universe at the American Museum of Natural History
  • Condensed-Matter Physics & Materials Science Seminar

Those are less than 10% of the listings included on the Science and the City calendar for this week.

For those of us outside NYC their site does offer a great deal of useful information including: Science and the City podcasts featuring interviews, conversations, and lectures by noted scientists and authors. Recent additions include: Father of String Theory Muses on the Megaverse by Leonard Susskind and In Search of Memory by Eric Kandel.

Great stuff for those in NYC, and elsewhere.

Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Awards

Nearly 1,500 students from 47 countries competed for nearly $4 million in scholarships and prizes at the 57th Intel International Science and Engineering Fair this week.

The grand prize winners of $50,000 scholarships were:

Information on all of the 2006 award winners as well as past winners.

Five Indian students win Intel awards:

Five Indian students are among the winners at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science competition in which an Indian-American girl also received a $50,000 scholarship by taking top honours.

The students excelled among a record-setting, worldwide pool of 1,482 competitors from 47 countries, regions and territories, setting the bar for future scientific research in three disciplines.

Teen’s project places second at science fair

His engineering design for emergency shelters, now in the hands of the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, yesterday earned Toll, 17, a junior at Cedar Crest High School, a second-place award at an international science fair in Indianapolis.

Art of Science at Princeton

spreading of a surfactant over a thin liquid film on a silicon wafer Image: illustrates evolving dynamical patterns formed during the spreading of a surface-active substance (surfactant) over a thin liquid film on a silicon wafer. Larger photo and more information.

Princeton University: Art of Science Exhibition (the web site doesn’t seem to work in Internet Explorer but does in Firefox) includes images from the 2005 exhibition.

‘Art of Science’ exhibition bridges disciplines by Teresa Riordan on 2006 competition selections announced today:

  • Jennifer Rea, a senior in the history of science, who took first place for her painting titled “Mitosis,” which depicts cell division superimposed on a floral fabric
  • Melissa Green, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering, who was awarded second place for “Isolated Hairpin,” a computer simulation of turbulent air flow
  • Qiangfei Xia, a graduate student in electrical engineering, who won third place for “Easter Bonnet,” a photograph taken with an electron scanning microscope of a tiny piece of metal melted by a laser onto a silicon chip.

Demystifying Technology for High School Students

Demystifying technology for high-schoolers by Greg Rienzi, Johns Hopkins University News:

The Engineering Innovation program, which Hopkins will initially offer at three JHU campuses and five California universities, will allow high school sophomores, juniors and seniors to enroll in the college-level course What is Engineering? taught by Johns Hopkins or other university-accredited faculty.

The initiative is based upon a successful program the Whiting School developed five years ago for students in Montgomery County. The program was expanded last year to include students in Baltimore City and Baltimore County.
…
The participants in the program will spend four weeks learning the basics of engineering as they conduct hands-on laboratory experiments and complete assignments that range from building a better mousetrap to assembling a digital circuit that operates a robot.

Johns Hopkins will continue to accept applications until June 1st, or until classes are full.

For more information see: Engineering Innovation from The Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Top degree for S&P 500 CEOs? Engineering

See more recent post with data from 2005-2009: S&P 500 CEO’s: Engineers Stay at the Top

The most common undergraduate degree for CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies is Engineering: with 20% of all CEOs (from 2005 CEO Study: A Statistical Snapshot of Leading CEOs

Another interesting point from the report (at least to those of us who grew up in Madison with a father who taught at the University of Wisconsin (teaching Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Statistics, in my father’s case, by the way):

For the second year in a row, the University of Wisconsin joins Harvard as the most common undergraduate university attended by S&P 500 CEOs. Prior to 2004, Harvard alone was the most common school attended.

Engineering the Boarding of Airplanes

Airlines Try Smarter Boarding

“An airplane that spends an hour on the ground between flights might fly five trips a day,” he explains. “Cut the turnaround time to 40 minutes, and maybe that same plane can complete six or seven flights a day.” More flights mean more paying passengers, and ultimately, more revenue.
…
Convinced that there was a statistical solution to the problem, Lindemann approached Arizona State University’s industrial engineering department. “We have a great university in our backyard, and hoped they could help,”
…
Professor René Villalobos and graduate student Menkes van den Briel began reviewing boarding systems used by other airlines. “The conventional wisdom was that boarding from back to front was most effective,” says van den Briel. The engineers looked at an inside-out strategy that boards planes from window to aisle, and also examined a 2002 simulation study that claimed calling passengers individually by seat number was the fastest way to load an aircraft.

The two then developed a mathematical formula that measured the number of times passengers were likely to get in each other’s way during boarding. “We knew that boarding time was negatively impacted by passengers interfering with one another,” explains van den Briel. “So we built a model to calculate these incidents.”

Villalobos and van den Briel looked at interference resulting from passengers obstructing the aisle, as well as that caused by seated passengers blocking a window or middle seat. They applied the equation to eight different boarding scenarios, looking at both front-to-back and outside-in systems.
…
Villalobos and van den Briel presented America West with a boarding approach called the reverse pyramid that calls for simultaneously loading an aircraft from back to front and outside in. Window and middle passengers near the back of the plane board first; those with aisle seats near the front are called last. “Our research showed that this method created the fewest incidents of interference between passengers,” Villalobos explains, “and was therefore the fastest.”

A nice example of industrial engineering. And a clear example of the benefit of industry higher education cooperation.

Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math

From the proposed “Sowing the Seeds Through Science and Engineering Research Act” on the House Democratic Science Committee web site:

establishes the Graduate Scholar Awards in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (GSA-STEM) program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). GSA-STEM is a graduate fellowship program providing 5000 new fellowships per year and modeled on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program. Each three-year fellowship awarded follows the student to his/her institution of choice, provides an annual $30,000 stipend, and provides a $15,000 fee to the institution in lieu of tuition. Selection of fellowship recipients follows the guidelines of the existing NSF fellowship program, except that special consideration is given to students who pursue advanced degrees in fields of national need, as determined by an advisory board established for GSA-STEM. Authorizes $225 million for NSF for FY 2007, $450 million for FY 2008, and $675 million per year for FY 2009 through FY 2011.

Updated, on May 8th, comparison of current related legislation (from the Democrat’s site – if there is a Republican alternative version I would be happy to post that, I just could not find a Republican summary – see more info on the Republican science committee “competitiveness” home page):

Competitiveness Report Recommendation: 5,000 new graduate fellowships each year in STEM areas of national need, administered by NSF. FY 2007,

President’s Competitive Initiative: No provision.

House Bills [Gordon]: H.R. 4596 tracks C-2 recommendation. FY 2007, $225 million.

House Bills [Boehlert]: No exactly equivalent provision. Explicitly authorizes the existing Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, and authorizes NSF to accept funds from other agencies to carry out the DEd. FY 2007, $225 million.

Senate Bills [PACE, S.2197, S.2198, S.2199; and Lieberman, S.2109]: S.2198 tracks C-1 recommendation, except the program is administered by DEd. FY 2007, $225 million.
S.2109 provides for 250 new graduate fellowships each year. FY 2007, $34 million.