Month: March 2014

Rachael Pressley wins 1st place

Congratulations to Rachael Pressley, Senior Geology student on winning 1st place in the Undergraduate Student Poster competition last Friday. Her project

“Questioning Uplift Rates for Suwannee River Basin, Florida”
was under the direction of Dr. Jason Gulley.

She will present this again for World Water Day on Wednesday, March 26, from 4-5pm in the Dow Lobby (campus side).

Very proud of her accomplishment!!

Environmental Engineering Seminar: Nuts and Bolts of Unconventional Oil and Gas Development

Environmental Engineering Seminar: Nuts and Bolts of Unconventional Oil and Gas Development including all you might like to know about the technology and practice of hydraulic fracturing
Wayne D Pennington, Interim Dean, College of Engineering, Michigan Technological University
Mon Mar 24, 2014 3pm – 4pm, Dow 642
Watch the seminar Video on Vimeo: Unconventional Oil and Gas Development: Technology and Practice of Hydraulic Fracturing

Over the past couple of decades, technology has been developed to produce oil and gas from geological formations that had been overlooked previously due to the lack of appropriate engineering techniques for those types of formations. As a result, the energy picture for the USA and for the world has been seriously modified, and the impact is being felt.  

Former Peace Corps Volunteer and Geoscientist Welcomed as New Geoscience Communication Fellow

Alexandria, VA – The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) and Schlumberger welcome former Peace Corps volunteer and geoscientist, Stephanie Tubman as the AGI/Schlumberger Geoscience Communication Fellow. Through a generous donation from Schlumberger, a global service provider to the oil and gas industry, Tubman will be working with AGI’s Critical Issues Program to disseminate geoscience information to help support decision making at the federal, state and municipal levels.  

Team Places 3rd in Society of Exploration Geophysicists Challenge

At a recent student “Challenge Bowl” competition organized by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists at the University of Oklahoma, a team of Michigan Tech students came in third. They were the only team composed of undergraduates to make the final round and they were also the only team with any females to make the finals.

“This is the third year that Michigan Tech students have participated in this competition, and our students consistently perform extremely well,” said Wayne Pennington, interim dean of engineering and faculty advisor for the Michigan Tech student section of SEG. “This year’s team consisted entirely of undergraduates, and they were up against formidable opposition from advanced graduate students, defeating almost all of them. We are very proud of their performance, and I personally am very pleased that Neala Creasy and Stephanie Dow were the students who chose to compete on our behalf.”

Seminar: Ice, Rocks, and Robots, Oh My!–Paving the Yellow-Brick Road to Europa

Department of Geological and Mining Engineering and Sciences Seminar
Friday, March 21, 3:05-3:55 pm, Dow 610
Ice, Rocks, and Robots, Oh My!–Paving the Yellow-Brick Road to Europa
Victoria Siegel, Ph.D. Student
GMES, Michigan Technological University
Astrobiologists agree that Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most promising places where our solar system might harbor life (besides Earth, of course). Data from Galileo and Hubble’s recent images of possible water vapor plumes escaping from Europa’s surface suggest that a liquid water ocean lies concealed beneath the moon’s thick ice shell. Over the past ten years, NASA has funded several projects to investigate autonomous systems we might use to explore this strange and challenging environment. As they are developed, these robots are put to good, practical use in terrestrial Europa-analog environments. From an Alaskan glacier, to flooded sinkholes in Mexico, to an ice-covered sea in Antarctica, these ‘bots are helping us explore, map, and understand extreme environments and life forms on Earth–all the while bringing us closer to making Europa sub-surface exploration a reality. If you think the Curiosity Rover is wild (it is), come see what planetary exploration could look like in the future.

Michigan Tech Students Head to Detroit for Alternative Spring Break

Students from the Michigan Tech National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) visited seven middle and high schools in Detroit over their Spring Break, March 11-14, 2014, to promote college and engineering to K-12 students. Two GMES students were in the group, Simisola Arogundade and Samantha Fentress. In the evenings, they conducted Family Engineering Night events at three K-8 schools. NSBE’s Alternative Spring Break is conducted in collaboration with the Detroit Public Schools Office of Science and the Detroit Math & Science Center, and funded in part, with a grant from John Deere.