Dr. Greg Odegard was recently presented wit the 2015 Exceptional Graduate Faculty Mentor Award from the Graduate School at the 2015 Graduate Research Awards Banquet. This Merit Award for Exceptional Graduate Student Mentor recognizes advocacy for graduate students, being available and encouraging to students, and creativity/interdisciplinary collaboration in new opportunities for graduate student.
The 2015 Winter Baja was held Saturday, Feb. 21, near the Student Development Complex at Michigan Technological University.
The University of Iowa car #48 came in first place, followed by Northern Michigan University car #40 at 2nd Place and Ferris State University car #76 at 3rd Place. Other standings are listed below showing the place and laps completed. In the dynamic event University of Michigan Car #1 came in first followed by University of Iowa Car # 68 at 2nd and University of Michigan Car #161 at 3rd.
by Mike Meyer, director, William G. Jackson CTL
The Dean’s Teaching Showcase nominee for this week comes from the College of Engineering. Dean Wayne Pennington has chosen to recognize Gordon Parker, the John and Cathi Drake Professor in the Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics Department. Both Pennington and MEEM chair Bill Predebon praised Parker as “a great success story of the flipped classroom approach.” Gordon has effectively implemented the flipped classroom model in both a senior level and graduate level controls course, and now has more than 30 video clips that are being used world-wide.
Michigan Tech students participated with other university students in an multi-year international competition to design a Portable Assisted Mobility Device (PAMD) through the Partners for the Advancement of Collaborative Engineering Education (PACE) program. There were 7 international teams and 45 universities from around the world involved, showing the “collaborative engineering” purpose of the PACE program. At the 2014 PACE Global Annual Forum in Turin (Italy) the projects were evaluated by an international team of judges including GM/Opel, Siemens, PLM Software, Autodesk, Oracle, and HP.
The Design Expo highlights hands-on, discovery-based learning at Michigan Tech. More than 600 students in Enterprise and Senior Design teams showcase their work and compete for awards. A panel of judges, made up of corporate representatives and Michigan Tech staff and faculty members, critique the projects.
Michigan Technological University, in collaboration with professionals from NASA, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Space Solar Power Institute, hosted a Space Solar Power (SSP) workshop to clarify the challenges facing SSP implementation. The workshop was held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments at Baltimore, MD, November 7 – 9, 2013. Researchers from Industry and Academia of many countries including India, Japan, UK and USA participated in this event.

The Sustainable Futures Institute is again hosting seven middle and high school teachers from Michigan and Wisconsin in a six-week research experience for teachers (RET) program funded by the National Science Foundation. The teachers are conducting state-of-the-art biofuels research projects in engineering and forestry in the labs of Shehkar Joshi (SFRES/Bio Sci), David Shonnard (Chem Engg), and Jeffrey Naber (MEEM).
By Marcia Goodrich
October 5, 2012—
Reza Shahbazian-Yassar thinks sodium might be the next big thing in rechargeable batteries.
Now, the gold standard in the industry is the lithium ion battery, which can be recharged hundreds of times and works really well. Its only problem is that it is made with lithium, which is not cheap. It could get even more expensive if more electric vehicles powered with lithium ion batteries hit the road and drive up demand.