Month: April 2015

SURF Award for Claire Eischer

Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Recipients Announced

This summer, the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program will fund 23 students from across the University with funds from the Vice President for Research and the Honors Institute. Some matching funds were provided by the Biotechnology Research Center and PI Adrienne Minerick. The total funding for the program this year is $92,000.

Since 2002, the SURF program has funded 270 students. In that time, SURF recipients have co-authored 60 peer reviewed publications.

Among the recipients is Exercise Science major Claire Eischer. Claire’s advisor is Tejin Yoon, and the project title is “Sex Differences in Neuromuscular Fatigue of the Knee Extensors During and After Eccentric Fatiguing Contractions.”

Read more at Tech Today.

Steve Elmer is a C-4 Winner

Steven Elmer
Steven Elmer

Creative Canvas Course Contest (C-4) Winners Announced

This spring semester, the Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning hosted an explosive program intended to showcase the most effective and user-friendly Canvas Courses at Michigan Tech. The third-annual C-4 competition focused on Canvas courses that are intuitive and easy to navigate, feature good course design, provide convenient access to information and materials students need and offer resources and activities that help students succeed in class. Canvas courses were nominated almost entirely by students, but other faculty and chairs were eligible to nominate Spring 2015 term courses for C-4 too.

Assistant Professor Steve Elmer is one of the winners, recognized for his EH 5310 course, Advanced Exercise Physiology.

The CTL Tip of the Week is brought to you by the Jackson Center for Teaching and Learning. For more general information or help with Canvas at Michigan Tech, be sure to visit Canvas One Stop.

Read more at Tech Today.

KIP Athletic Training Students Teach High Schoolers

High schoolers learn about athletic training at Michigan Tech clinic

High school students in the Copper Country had the chance to learn about a new career opportunity on Saturday at Michigan Tech’s athletic training clinic. Not only did they listen to lessons, but they also got some hands on experience.

Athletic training students from Michigan Tech, some of whom are majoring in Exercise Science or Sports and Fitness Management in the Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology (KIP), showed high school students what their job is all about at their athletic training clinic on Saturday.

Read more and watch the video at Upper Michigan’s Source, by Rebecca Himmelstein.

The event was held on Saturday, April 18, 2015, at the SDC Training Room. It was coordinated by Mayumi Ogino, a certified athletic trainer at Portage Health and an instructor for KIP.

AthleticTrainingClinic-041815-1 AthleticTrainingClinic-041815-2AthleticTrainingClinic-041815-3AthleticTrainingClinic-041815-4AthleticTrainingClinic-041815-5AthleticTrainingClinic-041815-6

Velovations Places Third in Design Expo

Velovations at Design Expo 2015
Velovations at Design Expo 2015

The Velovations team took third place in the Enterprise category at the 2015 Design Expo held at the Memorial Union Ballroom on April 16.

Team Leaders
Ian Connick, Mechanical Engineering and Kyle McGurk, Electrical Engineering
Advisor
Steve Lehmann and Paulus Van Susante, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics
Sponsors
Specialized, Thomson, Department of Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology
Project Overview
Our team is dedicated to working on bicycle and bicycling industry related projects. For the 2014-2015 academic year, Velovations has more than twenty-five students from various majors divided into four projects. The projects are: a pedal that offers the ability to transition from clipped in to a platform and back at the push of a button; a system to allow tire pressure change on the fly; an inexpensive winter commuting tire; and an innovative exercise system for wheelchair users that will allow further physical research. Velovations projects cover the complete product development range, from idea conception, research, and development, to customer communication, testing, and ultimately manufacturing.

Design Expo 2015 Success: Winners, Senior Design and Enterprise Projects

The International Business Ventures took first place in the Enterprise program and the “Aluminum Corrosion Study—Automotive Electrical Systems” team placed first for Senior Design. In Enterprise, Consumer Product Manufacturing and Velovations took second and third. In Senior Design, “Front End Protection for Data Acquisition” team and “Design & Development of an Automated Stacker for Highway Products of Nucor Steel Corporation” placed second and third. Three teams were awarded Honorable Mentions.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills.

Get Ready, Get Set: Design Expo 2015

Velovations
Hands-on work is what team captain Dan Krudy says is the key to his mechanical engineering project, a wheelchair-friendly exercise machine. The project is a collaboration with the RENEW-U research in the Kinesiology and Integrated Physiology Department.

“We have real-world experience, and this project is an opportunity to apply that,” Krudy says of the multiple internships he and his teammates have done and how that influenced their wheelchair-based exercise design.

The project is part of the Velovations Enterprise. The name is a blend of velo — meaning bike — and innovations, and the name inspires the students’ designs. Levi Vermeer and Kyle McGurk lead the other two Velovations teams.

Vermeer has MacGyvered cheaper snow tire options for winter bike commuters and designed a whole new test.

“Tires aren’t simple to test on snow and ice,” Vermeer says, explaining that he developed the test using a coding program, which will be an Enterprise legacy. “We’re leaving behind a test fixture that other projects can use.”

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Allison Mills.

KIP Faculty, Students Present in Boston

EB2015

Several faculty members and graduate students in the Kinesiology & Integrative Physiology (KIP) Department and Biological Sciences Department traveled to EB2015, Experimental Biology 2015, on March 28-April 1, 2015.

PhD student, Ida Fonkoue, was awarded the 2015 Caroline tum Suden/Frances Hellebrandt Award from the American Physiological Society. She also presented a poster during the conference and gave an oral presentation based on the following paper:

Abstract Title: Acute oral ingestion of alcohol modulates sympathetic neural transduction differently in Caucasians and African Americans

Master’s student Michael Huber presented the following posters at the conference:

Sympathoexcitation by Inhibition of SK Channel Activity in the Hypothalamic PVN is Attenuated by Local AT1 Receptor Blockade
Authors: Michael Huber, Le Gui, Andrew Chapp, Mingjun Gu, Jianhua Zhu, Zhiying Shan and Qing-Hui Chen

Stimulation of the Prorenin Receptor in the Paraventricular Nucleus Increases Sympathetic Outflow in Anesthetized Rat
Authors: Michael Huber, Rupsa Basu, Qing-Hui Chen and Zhiying Shan

PhD student Andrew Chapp gave an invited talk at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. The talk was entitled, “Acetate is an Active Metabolite of Ethanol: Increases Firing and Evokes Inward Currents through Activation of NMDA Receptors in RVLM Projecting CeA Neurons.”

From Tech Today.