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Activities
Concrete canoe places third
About 20 students attended the National Concrete Canoe Competition
held at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla. from June
15 to 18, 2006. Clemson placed fifth in the design paper, second
in the oral presentation, and second in the women’s sprint,
women’s endurance, and co-ed sprint. This gave us an overall
ranking of third for the competition. The canoe this year was called
“Take it for Granit” and included a tiger paw lit with
fiber optics. For placing third, Clemson will receive a $1,500 scholarship.
University of Wisconsin-Madison placed first and California Polytechnic
State University, San Luis Obispo came in second.
Clemson’s 2006 Concrete Canoe team (left to
right) included: Travis Yates, Lee Brackett, Jamie Kelso, Joe Davis,
Rusty Maben, Armen Amirkhanian, Ryan Habersang, Courtney McClive,
Kacie Caple, Becca Crane
SAE Formula car rolls on
This year Clemson’s SAE Formula team competed at the Ford
Proving Grounds in Detroit, Mich. They finished 25th place out of
120 schools. Also this year, SAE added another event on the west
coast, held at California Speedway in Fontana California just outside
of Los Angles. The team finished 13th out of 70 registered teams,
with a top 10 in the Acceleration, Skidpad, and Endurance Event.
The 2006 SAE Formula team members are (from left
to right): Dr. Dave Angstadt (Faculty Advisor) Jay Jakupca, Devin
Tucker, Rob Akins, David Grainger, Shannon Edd, Wes Johnson, Victor
Hugo Gallas Cervo, Zach Scott, Bobby Gunter, Karl Koenigstein (Michelin),
Casey Appleman, Anthony Beigay (Michelin and Clemson Alumnus).
Steel bridge carried heavy design
Clemson’s team traveled to Salt Lake City for the competition,
where the Tigers placed sixth overall out of 45 teams from the U.S.
and Canada. At the national competition Clemson had the third fastest
construction time, second best construction economy (time ×
number of builders), and the third stiffest bridge at the competition.
Although the Tigers placed in three of the six judged categories,
their bridge weighed too much to be competitive in the lightness
category and the strategy to make an extremely heavy, but extremely
stiff bridge didn’t produce the desired top finish.
In a competition where detail is of utmost importance and the cost
of mistakes is so high, the Clemson Steel Bridge Team has qualified
for the national competition for over 10 consecutive years, excelling
in design, fabrication, and teamwork.
Clemson’s Steel Bridge team includes (left to right): Patrick
Swindler, John Lynch, Andrew Ruffin, Warren Rohloff, Adam DAlessandro,
John Atkins, Michael Dukes, Ben Morris, Tim Strickland, Bill Beach,
Dr. Scott Schiff (Faculty Advisor); Top row, (left to right) Duncan
Bryant, Lori Koch, Sara Schiff, Suha Atiyeh, Clint Riley, Matt Bowers.
Steele wins prestigious NVIDIA Fellowship
Jay Steele, a computer science Ph.D. student, received a $25,000
NVIDIA Fellowship award. Steele’s research centers on using
Lattice-Boltzmann (LB) methods to model fluid flows and associated
transport phenomena. The methods simulate transport by tracing the
evolution of a single particle distribution through synchronous
updates on a discrete grid. An example of an application is the
development of realistic visual animations of clouds.
EPA STAR Fellowships go to Clemson students
Aurelie Soreefan and James Henderson, both Ph.D. students in the
School of the Environment, were recently awarded prestigious EPA
“Science to Achieve Results” (STAR) Fellowships.
Soreefan’s research, under Dr. Timothy DeVol, focuses on development
of a portable detection system for the long-term monitoring of tritium.
Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is prevalent in the
environment from natural sources, as well as from nuclear reactors
and Department of Energy facilities.
Henderson’s research, directed by Dr. Ronald Falta, evaluates
the mechanisms and rates of biodegradation of leaded gasoline additives
in groundwater. Recent research at Clemson has identified these
contaminants as posing a widespread threat to groundwater supplies
near gasoline stations that sold leaded gasoline in the past.
BioE student receives fellowship
Cheryl Gomillion, a bioengineering graduate student, recently received
a U.S. Department of Defense predoctoral fellowship to investigate
new methods of generating engineered tissue for reconstruction following
breast cancer. Gomillion was selected through a competitive peer
review process, which included a formal grant proposal, plus letters
of recommendation. Some 340 fellowship applications were submitted
and, of those, 72 were recommended for funding.
Bashash named best paper finalist at 2006 ASME Conference
Saeid Bashash, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, was selected
as one of three “Best Student Paper” finalists during
the 2006 American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ International
Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. He was recognized
for his technical research paper entitled A New Constitutive Modeling
and Control Paradigm for Piezoelectrically-actuated Nanostagers.
His major advisor is Nader Jalili, associate professor of mechanical
engineering.
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