The TIMEs
Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering • Cal Poly College of Engineering • Spring 2018
Message from the Chair —————————————————
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Dan Waldorf
he IME Department has been doing Big Things lately — starting with Big Data. One of our biggest new initiatives includes an emphasis on Big Data and using modern analytics techniques to solve industrial engineering problems. We added two new classes to the required curriculum, hired two new faculty members, and are growing funds and connections to establish a center for analytics and Big Data in our department labs. On the alumni front His Excellency Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair (Industrial Engineering, ’77) returned to campus to receive one of the university’s most prestigious awards. He was, in fact, the first recipient of the Cal Poly Alumni Excellence Award – “an award created to recognize individuals who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership locally, nationally and internationally,” said President Jeffrey D. Armstrong when he presented the award. One of our biggest cohorts of students started in the fall, and many of them will be taking advantage of new opportunities for summer undergraduate research, study abroad and work on campus Please see MESSAGE on Page 2
Monitoring Ocean Traffic
Cal Poly Engineering students wheel a radar and camera ocean monitor they helped design and build into place near the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse.
Undergraduates’ project will watch over marine protected area
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ndustrial and Manufacturing Engineering Professor Kurt Colvin wasn’t sure what to expect when his sales pitch to undergraduate engineering students last fall went something like “no credit and no pay for 60 to 80 hours of work over two quarters — just great experience.” But 18 students from several engineering disciplines answered the call to work on a solarpowered radar and camera monitor for the Piedras Blancas Marine Protected Area (MPA) off the northwest coast of San Luis Obispo County, a project Colvin developed with Gordon Hensley of the non-profit Environment in the Public Interest/San Luis Obispo COASTKEEPERS and the
Anthropocene Institute. “I think our students were really attracted to the environmental aspects of this project,” said Colvin. “The state knows surprisingly little about boat traffic in the MPAs and this monitor aims to provide real-time data to help manage the preserve.” Hensley, a Cal Poly biology alum, said the MPA is difficult to monitor because unlike a land-based park, there’s no visible borders. “We really have no idea how many people are traveling through the MPA,” he said. “This monitor will pick up a vessel once it enters the MPA, Please see MONITOR on Page 2
“This project has all the elements that Cal Poly has always wanted — an outside organization working with the university, there’s an actual practical application, and it’s the complete Learn by Doing package.”