Skip to main content

Information Update

Volume 14, Issue 18
May 2, 2012


In this issue:


College of Engineering employee survey open forum

Friday, May 11 11:00 a.m.–12:00 noon 101 Phillips Hall

Dear College of Engineering Staff, Earlier this year, you were asked to provide feedback on an employee survey. I would like to invite you to this open forum where I will share the results specific to the College of Engineering and begin a dialogue about what we should do with the information. Particularly on this topic, it is important that we have community involvement and participation so I hope you will be able to attend.

Best regards, Lance R. Collins Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering


Cornell Engineering launches leadership program

The College of Engineering is launching a new undergraduate leadership program with a recent gift of $700,000 from an anonymous alumnus. Erica Dawson, Ph.D. '04, will become the college's first director of Engineering Leadership starting May 1. She is currently director of the Program on Organizational and Executive Ethics at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dawson is charged with creating and implementing a program to enhance the education of engineering students. The goal is to provide opportunities for students to develop the knowledge and skills that will accelerate their growth as creative leaders and mentors.


Swanson gift to support Academic Excellence Workshops

$2 million of John A. Swanson’s '62 ME, M.Eng. '63, $10 million gift to the College of Engineering will support Academic Excellence Workshops. Established in the early 1990s, the workshops are optional, 1-credit supplements to core engineering courses in math, computer science, and chemistry. The active, problem-solving workshops are facilitated by upper-level engineering students, and are designed to promote peer collaboration and enhance understanding of course content. Participation has grown dramatically, with latest estimates indicating that nearly half of all engineering students participate in the workshops. In response to student and faculty interest, the program will expand course offerings in the 2012–2013 year to include new sections for ENGRD 2700 Basic Engineering Probability and Statistics.


Strogatz elected to AAAS

Steven H. Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the academy announced April 17. Strogatz, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1994, holds a joint appointment in mathematics and mechanical and aerospace engineering. He works in nonlinear dynamics and complex systems. Throughout his career, he has received many awards for research, teaching, and public service. In 2009 he was elected a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.


Cornell Baja SAE takes first

The Cornell Baja SAE Racing Team, which designs, builds, and races off-road vehicles, took first place at an international competition April 22. The 35 students, mostly mechanical engineering majors, beat out nearly 100 other student teams at the Baja SAE competition in Auburn, Ala. In addition to a first-place overall finish, ML08, the team's latest vehicle, garnered success in dynamic and static judging events, placing third in overall design, first in suspension and traction, second in hill climb, second in acceleration, fourth in endurance, and a perfect score on the cost report.


ASCE teams place at regionals

Cornell Engineering’s Concrete Canoe and Steel Bridge student teams both placed at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ annual regional competition held at Clarkson University April 19–21. The Steel Bridge Team placed third overall and the Concrete Canoe Team placed fourth overall. The bridge—which was fabricated by the students themselves—also won the minimum deflection award. Captains Anna Ferry ’12 and Beverly Yang ’13 led the canoe and bridge teams respectively. Prof. Jery Stedinger advises the Cornell ASCE student chapter.


Two teams make geothermal finals

Two Cornell student teams are among 10 selected nationally for phase two of the National Geothermal Student Competition, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Each team received a $10,000 research stipend and must submit reports by Aug. 31. Authors of the top three reports will present their results at the Geothermal Research Council's annual meeting Sept. 30 to Oct. 3 in Reno, Nev. An undergraduate team from Cornell University Sustainable Design (CUSD) will use remote sensing data to determine optimal geothermal energy sites, while a graduate team from the Cornell Energy Institute is gathering data and information to assess the Snake River Plain's potential for this sustainable energy. The teams are independent, though both are mentored by Jefferson Tester, the Croll Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.


Ehrhard is new Upson Visiting Professor

Peter Ehrhard has been appointed the Mary S. Upson Visiting Professor. He arrived April 23 and will remain through September. His office is at 342 Olin Hall. Ehrhard is active in microfluidics, including the coupling of electrokinetic effects and fluid flow, and free surfaces and fluid flow with moving contact-lines. Since 2006, Peter has been the Professor of Fluid Mechanics at Technical University, Dortmund (Germany) in the chemical engineering department. Prior to that, he was a professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe, with association to the former Kernforschungszentrum. Erhard has indicated a willingness to do some lecturing/teaching during his visit. He is hosted by the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Paul Steen, the Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Engineering.


Awards and honors in the engineering community

Anna Ferry ’12 CEE, has been selected to receive the American Society of Civil Engineers 2012 Student Leadership Award for Region 1. The ASCE Student Leadership Award is granted to someone who has demonstrated leadership in a student chapter or international student group through various activities, such as service as an officer, leading special events, interaction with university administration, or interaction with ASCE sections and branches.

The Master of Engineering program in Cornell's School of Operations Research and Information Engineering was a finalist for the first UPS George D. Smith Prize, which was awarded April 16 at the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research, in Huntington Beach, Calif. The competition recognizes excellence in preparing students to become practitioners of analytics and operations research. Eighteen schools had vied for the prize, and Cornell was one of three finalists. The winner was University of Michigan's Tauber Institute for Global Operations, and the other finalist was Lehigh University's Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.


Recent engineering news

  • Cornell Cup students to showcase robots
    The Cornell Cup engineering team will play host to 22 university student teams vying for cash prizes at the inaugural Cornell Cup USA, presented by Intel. The competition will take place May 4–5 at Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (April 26)

  • New CARE-Cornell partnership to take on global concerns
    Cornell and the global humanitarian organization CARE have launched CARE-Cornell—a partnership that will merge Cornell's cutting-edge research with CARE's experience fighting poverty to create solutions for global concerns, including world hunger and climate change. (April 19)


Submitting announcements to Information Update

Please send your news notes to engr_info_update@cornell.edu. Announcements will be published no more than twice and should be limited to about a hundred words or less. The next issue of Information Update, published biweekly during the academic year and monthly in the summer, will be May 16, 2012. The deadline for submissions to this next issue is Friday, May 11, 2012, at 5 p.m. Information received after the deadline will be published in a future issue if appropriate.