Capstone Engineer - Fall 2015

CAPSTONE Fall 2015

Coding Education College professor leads several efforts to get students interested in computer science

Features 12 A Crimson Dynasty

Astrobotics team continues success with 2015 championship

16 Language Engineering

Passion for other cultures leads civil engineering student abroad

18 First Down and Sound Student, professor use sounds from colliding

football helmets as alternative to understanding forces

20 Be Our Guest

College set to host three major conferences in the spring

22 Coding Education College professor leads several efforts to get

students interested in computer science

Departments 2 Dean’s Message 3 Surveying the College

Noteworthy news and research from UA Engineering

10 Currents

Events from around the College

28 Alumni Dynamics

Items of interest to Capstone engineers and computer scientists

35 Bits and Bytes

The College from outside

36 End User

Capstone engineers and computer scientists on today’s technology

37 Message from the CES

{ Capstone Engineer • Fall 2015 }

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Dean’s Message

Dear Alumni and Friends, The University of Alabama has a three-pronged mission: teaching, research and service. The teaching and research at the University get a lot of attention, but service is important as well.

Service goes by a lot of different names — outreach, volunteering and service-learning to name a few — but whatever you call it, our students and faculty continue to raise the bar. Last year, 26,000 students from across campus donated 1 million hours of their time to various causes either on campus or to the broader community. That’s just the hours we have recorded.

Our students and faculty in the College of Engineering are part of this effort. Either on their own or as a group, our students volunteer their time again and again. As an example, the Astrobotics team, which won its national NASA competition again, leads a sustained multiyear effort to teach math and science concepts at a nearby elementary school. This past year, members of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, a club students formed outside of class, led local sixth graders in a course on rocketry, culminating in a water-rocket contest at the school’s football field.

These examples barely scratch the surface of what our students accomplish.

The College’s faculty, too, is also heavily involved in reaching young people. Drs. Philip and Pauline Johnson, both professors in civil, construction and environmental engineering, were recently recognized by the University for their efforts to improve the quality of life through local and international service projects that involve students.

Dr. Jeff Gray, a professor in computer science, has become a national leader in computer science education. His zeal to get more K–12 students involved in learning to code and helping their teachers with computer science instruction has led to increased exposure to the discipline in Alabama.

We are more than classrooms and homework. Everyone in the College understands the full mission of the University.

Dr. Charles L. Karr Dean

Capstone Engineering Society 205-348-2452 Selina S. Lee, Chair, Board of Directors • Charles L. Karr, PhD, Dean, College of Engineering • Nancy Holmes, Manager, Capstone Engineering Society • Adam Jones, Editor • Judah Martin, Writer • Issue No. 52 • Capstone Engineer is published in the spring and fall by the Capstone Engineering Society. • Natorio Howard, Designer • Benita Crepps, Proofreader • Jeff Hanson, Bryan Hester, Zach Riggins, Matthew Wood, Photography • Address correspondence

to the editor: The University of Alabama, Capstone Engineering Society, College of Engineering, Box 870200, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0200 website at www.eng.ua.edu. The University of Alabama is an equal-opportunity educational institution/employer. • MC8793

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• Visit the College of Engineering

Surveying the College

Surveying the College Noteworthy news and research from UA Engineering

{ Capstone Engineer • Fall 2015 }

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Surveying the College

Previous page: Members of the UA Hoverteam compete at the Third Annual University Hoverbowl Challenge at Lake Lurleen State Park in March.

Above: Students in the AFS casting team, from left, Ahmad Salman, from Jabriya, Kuwait; Mallory Creed, from Destrehan, Louisiana; and graduate student Shian Jia, from Beijing, China, pour aluminum into a mold in the College’s foundry.

Good spring for College’s student teams

Competition teams from across the College finished well in their contests this past spring.

The University of Alabama Hoverteam, made up of mostly students from aerospace engineering and mechanics, won the third‐annual University Hoverbowl against Auburn University at Lake Lurleen State Park in Tuscaloosa County. The 2015 craft had less horsepower than the craft students built in 2014, but it was lighter and used a fan for propulsion instead of a propeller, a change that helped make the craft faster and easier to steer.

A team of metallurgical and materials engineering students placed second at the 2015 Student Casting Competition for the Southeast, organized by the American Foundry Society, for their cast of a reversible griddle of aluminum and brass alloys.

A team of mechanical engineering students placed second overall at the 2015 annual American Society of Mechanical Engineers Human Powered Vehicle Team competition. Along with finishing second overall out of more than 30 teams in the regional contest, the team placed second in a women’s 400-meter drag race, fourth in the male-drag race, second in endurance and fifth in design. The team was judged on design, safety and performance.

A team of students from electrical and computer engineering placed second overall at the IEEE SoutheastCon Hardware competition.

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Strong showing for UA students after first year in national vehicle contest

Students from the College of Engineering, along with peers from across campus, were selected as the “Team to Watch” after the first year of the four‐year EcoCAR 3 competition that challenges students to design an advanced, energy‐efficient vehicle. UA’s team was ranked in the top half of the competition heading into the second year.

In 2014, UA was selected as one of 16 institutions to compete in EcoCAR 3, an engineering competition that challenges students to create a car that uses less energy and emits less pollution without sacrificing performance, safety or consumer appeal. This is the first team from UA to participate in an Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition, established by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors Co. and managed by Argonne National Laboratory.

UA’s EcoCAR 3 team also placed first for its media relations report, outreach presentation, Clean Cities Coalition Outreach Initiative and leadership, and for executing the most creative outreach event. The team’s mechanical-engineering presentation placed third. About 150 students from eight different disciplines are part of UA’s team.

CES honors outstanding senior

Eric S. McVay, BSAE ’15, received the 2015 Capstone Engineering Society Outstanding Senior Award. McVay, who lives in

Surveying the College

Eric McVay, center, flanked by Dr. Charles L. Karr, dean of the UA College of Engineering, and Nancy Holmes, director of the CES. McVay was the 2015 CES Outstanding Senior.

Tuscaloosa, is pursuing a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at UA. A native of Portland, Oregon, he served three tours of duty with the Army National Guard before transferring to UA in 2012.

A cadet in the UA Army ROTC, McVay is also a member of the Alabama Army National Guard.

A double major in aerospace engineering and physics, McVay was selected for the UA Outstanding Transfer Student Award in 2013. He is a member of Sigma Gamma Tau honor society.

As an undergraduate researcher, he designed and built a test platform to examine the effects of dynamic stall on an oscillating hydrofoil. McVay presented his findings to the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics. He also interned as a test engineer at Dynetics Inc. McVay helped develop RocketStat, a senior-design project that required the team to build a rocket to deploy a scientific payload at 10,000 feet. McVay was president of the UA chapter of AIAA and co-founder of the campus chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.

After completing his graduate degree, he intends to continue professional development in the field of astronautics. His longterm career interests include space mission analysis, space propulsion, space systems engineering and manned space flight.

The CES began the Outstanding Senior Award in 1986 to honor an exceptional student who deserves distinction among his or her peers. An outstanding student is selected from the 11 academic programs in the College.

Two UA students receive critical language scholarships from State Department

A student in environmental engineering received a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State to study Arabic in Ibri, Oman, this past summer.

Charlotte Sheridan of Vienna, Virginia, is part of the UA Honors College and the University Fellows Experience and was among the roughly 550 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students who received a scholarship from the CLS Program in 2015. Recipients spent seven to 10 weeks in intensive language institutes this summer in one of 13 countries.

“It’s so rewarding, after studying a language, to be able to communicate with native speakers and explore the culture more fully,” Sheridan said. “When I arrived at UA, I knew I wanted to learn another language and chose Arabic because I’ve long found all the layers of Middle Eastern politics fascinating.”

She hopes to combine her language and engineering skills to pursue international development work after graduation.

Two students named Hollings Scholars

Two students in the College of Engineering received the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship for 2015–17. The awardees are Continued on Page 6

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Surveying the College

Dr. Jay K. Lindly receives the 2015 T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership Award from Dean Karr at a ceremony in April.

Jason Britchkow, of Dresher, Pennsylvania, and Michael Dunn, of Merritt Island, Florida.

The scholarship provides financial assistance during the junior and senior years and pays for a 10-week internship at NOAA or a NOAA-approved facility.

Since the program’s inception in 2005, UA has had more engineering and computer science students named Hollings Scholars than any institution.

Britchkow is studying computer science and minoring in German, as well as participating in UA’s Computer-Based Honors Program. His research involves the programming and design of a tornado-response-virtual-reality simulation with UA’s Center for Advanced Public Safety.

Dunn, who is studying civil engineering and participating in the Computer-Based Honors Program, is interested in transportation and traffic engineering. He plans to use his scholarship to conduct further research in his field and hopes to obtain an internship with NOAA researching natural-disaster-evacuation efficiency.

Lindly receives Hackney Award Dr. Jay K. Lindly, professor of civil engineering and director of the University Transportation Center for Alabama, received the 2015 T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership Award.

The T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership Award honors a faculty member who exemplifies the constant guidance

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and leadership necessary to make the College of Engineering exceptional.

Lindly began his academic career at The University of Alabama in 1987 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1992 and professor in 2006. Early in his career, Lindly served as faculty adviser for the Chi Epsilon student honor society. In 1998, he received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Chi Epsilon Southeastern States.

Lindly has been a registered professional engineer in Alabama since 1992.

He was named director of the University Transportation Center for Alabama in 2009. His research interests coincide with UTCA’s research theme of management and safety of transportation systems.

The Hackney award was created as a tribute to T. Morris Hackney and was made possible by the contributions from John H. Josey and his son, Howard Josey.

Three College students honored as Goldwater Scholars

Three students from the College of Engineering were selected as Goldwater Scholars for the 2015–16 academic year. They are Tom Ludwig, a chemical engineering major from Brunswick, Ohio; Sarah McFann, a chemical engineering major from Arlington, Tennessee; and Samantha Tilson, a chemical engineering major from Littleton, Colorado.

Surveying the College

Three students from the College were named Goldwater Scholars in 2015. They are, from left, Samantha Tilson, Thomas Ludwig and Sarah McFann.

This year, 260 Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,206 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide.

In the past 10 years, UA ranks among the top 10 institutions nationwide for engineering students selected as Goldwater Scholars. Among all disciplines, UA is No. 1 in the country since 2007 in Goldwater Scholars.

Ludwig’s research is focused on using molecular simulations to guide the synthesis of high-performance thermoelectric materials. He is particularly interested in harnessing the power of computer simulations and computational modeling to help solve complex problems.

McFann is seeking a research career in systems biology and mathematical modeling because it will require both attention to detail and big-picture thinking. Over the past few years, she has conducted research at UA, the University of California at Berkeley and Hiroshima University in Saijo, Japan.

Tilson has conducted research in biochemical engineering on cancer stem cells. Her research aims to determine the effect of the apoptosis (cell death) inhibitor Y-27632 on the propagation of glioblastoma (brain cancer) stem cells. She plans to pursue a career as a primary investigator at the National Institutes of Health researching regenerative medicine.

CS students do well in national contest Two University of Alabama students studying computer science recently finished in the top five at a national computer science contest.

Matt Bowen, from Madison, Alabama, placed second at the Association for Computing Machinery Student Research Competition earlier this month. Also, Christina Noe, a sophomore from Scottsboro, Alabama, placed in the top five.

Sponsored by Microsoft Research, the student research contest challenges graduate and undergraduate students to submit their research for evaluation by professional computer scientists.

Bowen developed a way for smartphones or tablet computers with a camera to track a baseball as it travels from the pitcher to home plate, allowing the application to display the speed of the pitch and the ball’s place in the strike zone.

Noe placed in the top five with a program created for LEAP, a motion-capture hardware device for personal computers, that allows people to perform some arm rehabilitation and physical therapy at home.

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Surveying the College

In Brief UA honored by construction industry for engineering curriculum

The University of Alabama received the 2015 Curriculum Partner Award at the Construction Industry Institute, or CII, Annual Conference in Boston in August. The award is sponsored by the CII Professional Development Committee and given to universities that successfully incorporated published CII research findings in their curriculum over the previous calendar year.

Professors recognized for community engagement

Dr. Philip W. Johnson, associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, and Dr. Pauline D. Johnson, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, were honored by the UA Council on Community-Based Partnerships with the Distinguished Community-Engaged Scholar–Faculty award.

In 2005, the Johnsons co-founded what today is known as Student Engineers in Action. They have mentored students in incubating, planning, funding, executing and evaluating local and international projects, including eight summer projects in sanitation, water, solar and traditional energy systems in remote villages in Peru and drinking-water sanitation projects in Vietnam and Cambodia. They have partnered with the Hale Empowerment and Revitalization Organization, Sumter County schools and Habitat for Humanity, and have served as faculty mentors for many Black Belt sanitation, water and recreational enhancement projects.

Students win UA awards

For a sixth consecutive year, a student from the UA College of Engineering was recognized as the top UA senior. Brian Goodell of Plattsburgh, New York, was the winner of the 2015 Catherine Johnson Randall Award that goes to the most outstanding graduating senior at UA. Goodell studied chemical engineering and physics.

The UA Graduate School awarded Steven Price, of Huntsville, Alabama, a graduate student in mechanical engineering, the Outstanding Master’s Thesis award. Yaolin Xu, from China, won the Excellence in Research by a Doctoral Student.

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Clockwise from top left: Dr. Philip W. Johnson, Dr. Pauline D. Johnson, Dr. Allen S. Parrish and Brian Goodell

CS professor selected for UA post

Dr. Allen S. Parrish, professor of computer science and director of the Center for Advanced Public Safety, has been named associate vice president for research at UA. He will provide leadership in promoting strategic research development at UA and lead the development of activities that bridge the needs of researchers and the institution. Parrish remains CAPS’ director.

CS professor to edit journal

Dr. Jeff Gray, professor of computer science, was recently named the editor-in-chief of Journal on Software and Systems Modeling, or SoSym, the top research journal in the software modeling area.

SoSym is a quarterly, international English-language journal that focuses on theoretical and practical issues pertaining to the development and application of software and system modeling languages and techniques.

Surveying the College

Retirements Dr. Eric S. Carlson, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, retired after 25 years at UA. Carlson joined the College as a professor of mineral engineering before transitioning to chemical engineering in 1996. He is a reservoir engineering expert with high proficiency in reservoir characterization, well test analysis, fluid properties, project economics and reservoir-simulationapplication-development. Carlson obtained his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Wyoming, the latter in 1986. After graduation, he worked at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Morgantown Energy Technology Center before coming to UA. Since 1996, he received more than $6 million in external research grants.

Dr. Paul S. Ray, professor in civil, construction and environmental engineering, retired after 25 years of service at the University. Prior to coming to UA, Ray worked 26 years in industry including 12 years in project planning for Bechtel and as an industrial engineer in automotive industries in India. After earning a doctorate in industrial engineering from the University of Oklahoma, he joined UA’s College of Engineering in industrial engineering. He was named a Fellow by the Institute of Industrial Engineers in 2008, named Educator of the Year by the System Safety Society in 2004 and selected for the 1999 Safety

Research Award from the American Society of Safety Engineers. In 2003-04, he served as president of the International Society of Occupational Ergonomics and Safety. Ray educated hundreds of engineering students with his course on safety engineering and received more than $1 million in research contracts and grants.

Dr. Robert P. Taylor, professor of mechanical engineering and associate director of the Alabama Industrial Assessment Center, retired after more than 10 years of service at UA, including a stint as head of the mechanical engineering department. Before coming to UA in 2004, he served Mississippi State University for 25 years as a mechanical engineering professor, associate dean of engineering and interim dean of engineering. Taylor’s research interests are in the areas of heat transfer and fluid mechanics and applications of those fields in energy systems. He has been recognized as a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and he received a NASA Certificate of Recognition for Creative Development of a Technical Innovation. Taylor was named the Robert B. Abernethy Uncertainty Award recipient by the International Society for Measurement and Control and the Garland H. Duncan Award recipient by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Taylor received a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Mississippi State University.

Dr. Eric S. Carlson

Dr. Paul S. Ray

Dr. Robert P. Taylor

New to the College Dr. Travis Atkinson, assistant professor, CS

Dr. Shreyas Rao, assistant professor, ChBE

Dr. Todd Freeborn, assistant professor, ECE

Dr. Aijum Song, assistant professor, ECE

Dr. Qiang Huang, assistant professor, ChBE

Dr. Mruthunjaya Uddi, assistant professor, ME

Dr. David MacPhee, assistant professor, ME

Promotion and Tenure

Tenure and promotion to associate professor

Promotion to professor

Dr. Jason Bara, ChBE

Dr. Fei Hu, ECE Dr. Heath Turner, ChBE

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Currents

Currents Events from around the College

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Currents

Previous page: Students from the College help students at the nearby Hillcrest Middle School launch rockets they designed in class. Top, bottom left: High school students at the SITE camp compete with catapults they designed during the camp. Bottom right: High school students from the city of Tuscaloosa test a building they designed in the Large Scale Structures Lab on campus.

UA students teach local middle school about rocketry

A water-rocket contest among students at Hillcrest Middle School was the culmination of an outreach effort by students from the College.

Engineering students assisted sixth-grade science teachers at the school in Tuscaloosa County to prepare their classes for the competition by leading courses in rocket history, engineering and design while also helping with post-contest design evaluations.

CE helps area students learn about structures

Technology Academy. The students in the STEM-based class formed groups to design a high-rise structure, and the UA students picked a design to build and test on the small shake table in the Large Scale Structures Laboratory. The table tested the durability of the design.

Students introduced to engineering

The College hosted about 150 rising juniors and seniors in high school for the Student Introduction to Engineering, or SITE, a summer camp of three weeklong sessions. SITE students live in residence halls and engage in team exercises. They attend minicourses in mathematics, engineering, computer science and English. As part of the camp, students participate in a design competition.

Civil engineering students helped teach a course on procedures of high-rise building design to a class at the Tuscaloosa Career and

{ Capstone Engineer • Fall 2015 }

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Astrobotics team continues success with 2015 championship

By Judah Martin

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The 2015 astrobot, designed and built by students from the College, helped the Alabama Astrobotics team to its second win in the NASA Robotics Mining Competition. The UA team is the most decorated in the contest’s six-year history.

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n the six years since NASA began hosting its Robotics Mining the team only had five members when the competition finally rolled Competition, The University of Alabama Astrobotics team around in the spring of 2010. has emerged as the competition’s most successful team.

The team was called Alabama Lunabotics at the time, since the This past May, the team won the top competition focused specifically on mining prize at the contest held at the Kennedy lunar soil. The competition required the Space Center in Florida. The team also team to build a robot capable of navigating won first place in 2012, making them the through and excavating at least 10 kilograms only team in the competition’s history of simulated lunar regolith — a layer of loose to finish in first place more than once. material that covers a solid rock — within two Overall, the UA team is the competition’s competition runs of 10 minutes through an most decorated team, placing second in obstacle course. That year, the team finished 2014 and third in 2013. sixth.

“The 2015 NASA RMC National “That team was woefully undermanned Championship cements Alabama and lacked significant experience building Astrobotics as the top robotic space robots in general and, more specifically,

—Dr. Kenneth Ricks mining program in the country,” said Dr. had no experience with how robots would Kenneth Ricks, UA associate professor of handle the simulated lunar soil in which the electrical and computer engineering and competition was held,” Ricks said. “However, team adviser. “This consistent level of excellence is unmatched and the energy and enthusiasm of the students overcame the team’s stands testament to the hard work and dedication of our students.” weaknesses, and they laid the foundation for the organization we But the team actually got off to a meager start in 2009. Back then now have in place.”

“This consistent level of excellence is unmatched and stands testament to the hard work and dedication of our students.”

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Previous page: Team member Jake Webster works on the astrobot in space provided for the team in Hardaway Hall. Above: Alabama Astrobotics team members at the competition at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

After that first year, the size of the team grew, and it attracted students from across the College. With growth, the quality of the designs improved.

At the 2011 competition, competing against 50 teams from universities around the country, the UA team finished fourth. Each year students improved the robot, and each year their competition score reflected their efforts.

Just as the team has changed, the competition itself has changed a lot, too, with the general goal of navigating the terrain and excavating the regolith becoming more difficult to accomplish each year as new and more difficult requirements for the robot are added to the competition. Soon the competition evolved to encompass broader operations on planets and asteroids, and the team accordingly changed its name to Alabama Astrobotics.

So far, the team has managed to remain a step ahead by mastering concepts like autonomy and adjusting the size and capabilities of the robot to improve its mass and speed. For 2015, the team cut more than 20 kilograms from the mass of the 2014 robot to create one of the lightest robots in the competition.

For autonomy, Alabama Astrobotics is the only team to use lidar sensors on the robot. Lidar is used to detect a physical target placed in the arena, making it possible to calculate the robot’s position within the arena. This technique resulted in positional accuracies of 2–3 inches.

As a result, the team’s first competition run this year was completed by the robot fully autonomously, the first robot in the contest’s history to complete a run with complicated autonomous programming that could be used by an actual NASA robot on another planet or asteroid, Ricks said.

“Our successes are the result of having talented, dedicated students who recognize the value of hard work and who are not afraid to put in the hours necessary to be successful, “ Ricks said.

“Our students understand the commitment required, and they have demonstrated they are willing to do the work. And, while this is at a different level than football, make no mistake about it. Winning a national championship in anything is hard to do.”

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LANGUAGE ENGINEERING Passion for other cultures leads civil engineering student abroad

By Adam Jones

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isitors have not always been kind to Peru’s Maijuna tribe. Situated on northeastern Peru’s Yanayacu River, the ancient tribal land is rich in natural resources, even though about 400 of its natives live in extreme poverty.

Like other outsiders to the tribe, Rachel Ramey was regarded somewhat suspiciously when she arrived. A member of Student Engineers in Action, formerly Engineers without Borders, Ramey made the first of two trips with a group of engineering students from The University of Alabama in the summer of 2013 to improve sanitation in a Maijuna village.

“We were foreigners; we looked different, came from a different place, and arrived in the

villages for a week only to leave after completing a project,” said Ramey, a senior from Dayton, Ohio, studying civil engineering while working on a master’s in business administration at UA. Luckily, Ramey had an ace up her sleeve that many of her traveling companions did not. She spoke Spanish and could communicate with the villagers. Ramey began learning Spanish at an early age. She spoke enough that, in high school, she was invited along to act as a translator for several volunteer trips in Mexico.

Since then, she has made two trips to the Peruvian Amazon to work on water sanitation projects and completed an internship in the Amazon with an environmental conservation-nongovernmental organization as well as studied abroad in Colombia during her junior year. This past summer, she also traveled to India for three weeks with a group from UA’s STEM Path to the MBA program to study entrepreneurial solutions for poverty-stricken areas.

Her work abroad has earned her a prestigious, nationally competitive Boren Scholarship to study Portuguese and naturalresource management at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil. The Boren Scholarship is part of an initiative of the National Security Education Program that provides funding opportunities for undergraduate students from the United States to study less commonly taught languages in world regions critical to U.S. interests. The scholarship is a major federal initiative to build a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international skills. In exchange for funding, Borenaward recipients agree to work in the federal government for a period of at least one year.

She is the first engineering or computer science student at UA to be awarded this language-focused scholarship.

“I’ve never seen (engineering and language) as two separate studies,” Ramey said. “Engineering is an international

Previous page: Rachel Ramey has traveled across the globe while pursuing an education at The University of Alabama. Ramey visited Machu Picchu in Peru while on a trip with Student Engineers in Action in 2013. Above: Ramey visited Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2015 as part of a study abroad experience in South America. Photos courtesy of Ramey.

discipline that allows for people from all over the world to work homes, they were able to use their construction experience to help together.” the students quickly construct the composting toilet designed the Ramey said her time volunteering with the Maijuna tribe was previous summer. the most eye-opening experience abroad.

After the students in Ramey’s group left, she stayed to complete During the first trip, Ramey’s group worked on water testing, her internship with a local nongovernmental organization, an installing solar panels in a newly constructed experience that allowed her to work with community building and designing a volunteers who were more immersed in the communal composting toilet. She was Maijuna community. surprised at how untrusting the villagers While engineering and language were of their efforts. study may initially seem like unrelated “Other groups had been to the villages, fields, understanding both disciplines was and one even installed water filters in several a key part of helping Ramey get to know homes,” she said. “But the community the members of the tribe. As a part of didn’t buy into the effort, perhaps not the University’s STEM Path to the MBA understanding the benefits, or choosing program offered through the Culverhouse not to use them. I learned the importance of College of Commerce, Ramey hopes to listening to local people wherever you do a use her knowledge of business to improve project and the importance of flexibility to natural-resource access and management change plans for unforeseeable situations. in developing countries. After working with You have to treat them as the adults they the Maijuna, she is particularly interested —Rachel Ramey are and build personal relationships first in working in South America. By learning before any change you suggest can begin to Portuguese, a language commonly spoken happen.” throughout South America, she will be prepared to work across the Ramey established a level of trust with the villagers by returning continent’s international borders. with Student Engineers in Action the following summer. She and “Although English is spoken worldwide, an understanding of the other students were able to garner community support for the other languages and cultures is imperative to working in teams with group’s project. Because many of the Maijuna natives build their own people from all over the world,” she said.

“I’ve never seen (engineering and language) as two separate studies.

Engineering is an international discipline that allows for people all over the world to work together.”

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Student, professor use sounds from colliding football helmets as alternative to understanding forces

By Chris Bryant

hen football helmets collide, they produce an unmistakable sound.

With concerns rising over concussion risks, some parents and others are increasingly concerned about each pop they hear.

Now, the sounds themselves are being studied.

University of Alabama student Brandon McChristian hopes his research of those sound waves begins the process of better understanding the forces involved in those collisions and, perhaps one day, enables inexpensive sensing methods for a safer game.

Working with Dr. Steve Shepard, professor of mechanical engineering, McChristian used a special University lab designed to eliminate acoustic reflections, microphones, a high-tech signal analyzer, a couple of helmets borrowed from the athletic department and some good ol’ fashioned string to prove a direct correlation between sound energy and helmet impact energy.

Shepard recently incorporated data from McChristian’s proof-of-concept research into a grant funding proposal to the National Science Foundation.

The University has already filed a patent application on the technology, and, if additional research funding is secured, Shepard hopes to further develop methods for assessing helmet impact severity using sound.

McChristian, a sophomore from Nashville, Tennessee majoring in mechanical engineering while conducting the research, was one of more than 700 UA students who presented research findings at UA’s annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference.

“This project has helped me when it comes to applying my coursework

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Brandon McChristian hangs a football helmet in the Structural Acoustics Laboratory in the Alabama Innovation and Mentoring of Entrepreneurs, or AIME, center. Photo by Erin Nelson and courtesy of The Tuscaloosa News.

to the practicality of a research setting,” McChristian said. “Seeing the research process from initial setup to data gathering and, eventually, processing has been invaluable.”

The novelty of this research approach, Shepard says, is that sensors do not have to be mounted directly on player helmets.

As concussion concerns rise, it has triggered an interest in developing accurate, cost-effective ways of measuring the impacts of helmet collisions. Most systems under development rely on sensors, called accelerometers, placed within helmets to measure impacts. The NFL has experimented with these approaches.

However, Shepard said accelerometers and the required wireless communication system are not cost-effective for many nonprofessional teams who do not have an NFL-sized budget.

“Sound measurements on the sideline, though, would be much cheaper to implement and the hardware easier to maintain,” Shepard said.

Working with Shepard in the University’s hemi-anechoic chamber, a research lab isolated from external sounds, McChristian used a pendulum-type experiment to create and measure sound waves radiating from controlled helmet collisions.

With two helmets suspended in the chamber using string, a controlled collision is created by swinging one helmet from a known height and allowing it to collide with another helmet.

Two nearby microphones attached to a dynamic signal analyzer are then used to record the sound waves resulting from collision.

Using the data and careful calculations, McChristian proved that the sound waves’ energy directly correlated to the helmet impact energy.

“Most people watching a football game on TV would not see this result as very surprising,” Shepard said. “Nevertheless, the result is a vital first-step in the process in order to demonstrate to funding agencies the validity of a technique using sound.”

Shepard is seeking additional funding to study more advanced techniques in collision assessment using sound.

The hemi-anechoic chamber, one of the largest in the Southeast, resembles a high-tech recording studio, with its walls and ceiling covered with a thick, foam-like material that eliminates all acoustic reflections. This isolation allows for detailed acoustic measurements on a wide range of experiments.

Gray, triangular wedges, some 2-feet thick, cover the walls’ surface, while the 8-inch thick metal walls are filled with insulation made from recycled denim. Additionally, the entire chamber and the supporting concrete floor, weighing a combined 150,000 pounds, float on springs to prevent outside vibrations from interfering with acoustic testing.

The chamber is located in UA’s AIME Building, which has 18-inch thick exterior concrete walls, another sound barrier.

“There are still lots of questions to answer,” Shepard says, “but the idea is certainly feasible, based on previous research and Brandon’s results.”

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Be Our Guest College set to host three major conferences in the spring

By Judah Martin

T

he University of Alabama will make good use of its new engineering buildings this fall with a series of conferences hosted on campus that should bring about 1,600 students, professors and engineering professionals.

Elizabeth Cook and other students and faculty members have been preparing to host the regional American Institute of Chemical Engineers, AIChE, conference since the UA chapter won the hosting bid in 2014. As conference chair, Cook is in charge of garnering faculty support, enlisting local corporate sponsors and, of course, touring facilities on campus to find the perfect spaces to host conference events. Luckily, she has a lot of places to choose from.

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{ The University of Alabama }

“I think UA is the perfect place to host this conference,” she said. “Our chemical engineering department is booming. We’ve just gotten brand-new buildings and they’re all finished, so we’ve got a beautiful engineering campus.”

The conference will take place March 31–April 2, 2016, and is expected to have about 500 attendees. There will be a research paper and poster competitions, professional development, a tour of Mercedes and Nucor Steel and the ChemE Car contest, in which students build a small-scale car fueled by various chemical reactions.

“The University of Alabama College of Engineering is one to be on the lookout for because we’re growing exponentially, and so is the

quality of our students,” Cook said. “The department has more than doubled in size over the past few years.”

Cook isn’t the only one preparing for a conference. Over in civil engineering, Dr. Derek Williamson and students are preparing to host the American Society of Civil Engineers Southeast I Student Conference. This will be the University’s first time hosting the conference since 2005, said Williamson, who serves as director of undergraduate programs for civil, construction and environmental engineering.

With at least 800 students and close to 200 other attendees from 26 schools expected to be in attendance, the Southeastern conference is the largest of the 18 ASCE regional conferences held each spring. The conference will be held March 10-12 and will include a business meeting, professional and technical presentations, social activities, an awards banquet and competitions in surveying and technical paper presentations. Additionally, the conference will include competitions for concrete canoe and steel bridge teams.

“In the Southeast we typically have about 12 small competitions

plus the technical paper and the two big national steel bridge and concrete canoe competitions,” Williamson said. “We have reserved Lake Lurleen for the canoe races.”

As with the ASCE regional conference, the UA College of Engineering also tends to host an American Society of Engineering Education Southeast section meeting every 10 years. The University chapter will be hosting again on March 13-15, 2016, for the first time since 2006.

Dr. Beth Todd, associate professor and undergraduate program coordinator of mechanical engineering, serves as sponsor for the local chapter. She hopes to have around 150 students in attendance.

With the theme for this year’s meeting being “engineering for sustainability,” the meeting’s workshops will focus on curricula, courses and other engineering preparation that are necessary to practice engineering in a changing world.

“We would like attendees to see our growth, expansion and new facilities and to think of this as an exciting place for graduate students to do research on a variety of topics,” Todd said.

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Coding

Education College professor leads several efforts to get students interested in computer science

By Adam Jones

F

or Dr. Jeff Gray the logic is simple: If jobs in computer science are in high demand, yet difficult to fill because not enough students learn the discipline, then much more needs to be done to get additional students interested in computer science as early as possible in the education pipeline.

“Software is everywhere, and computing has the potential to positively impact all sciences and engineering areas, as well as many areas of daily life,” Gray said. “Computer science as a foundational core is as important to learn now as any physical or life science, yet computer science is not taught in the overwhelming majority of schools.

The manifestation of that logic has led Gray, a professor of computer science in the UA College of Engineering, to become a national leader in computer science education, recognized around the country for his work.

This past year he was recognized as one of three national Distinguished Educators by the Association for Computing Machinery, the first from the state of Alabama to receive the designation. He is also a member of the 10-person Education Advisory Panel for Code.org, an influential advocacy group for computer science education.

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Dr. Jeff Gray, professor of computer science, led training workshops for about 550 elementary school teachers across Alabama, including several in Tuscaloosa, in an effort to help teachers introduce computer science concepts into their classrooms.

He has worked with partners across the country and Alabama to develop new computer science courses and instruction, and leads contests and camps to spur interest with students. He does this service while maintaining his teaching and research in the department of computer science. In addition to his K–12 education efforts, he also mentors seven doctoral students and leads three active National Science Foundation research projects.

“I often feel like I am wearing two different hats.” he said.

In 2007, Gray received the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award. The following year, he was named the Alabama Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation.

For Gray, teaching computer science or incorporating computational concepts into a curriculum at all levels makes sense. Software and automation are only going to be more etched into every industry, and students need exposure to coding and programming languages — what they do, how they work and why they are useful. Gray said

that computer science in high school needs to go beyond teaching students to be just users of technology, such as learning how to use Microsoft Office, but rather developers of new technology.

“Computer science as a foundational core is as important to learn now as any physical or life science, yet computer science is not taught in the overwhelming majority of schools.”

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{ The University of Alabama }

New AP course

Gray has worked with the College Board and the National Science Foundation since 2011 on piloting a new advanced placement computer science course, called CS Principles, while also working to train high school teachers in Alabama and across the United States to teach the course.

The College Board administers exams and oversees curriculum for high school courses that can count toward college credit, commonly called AP classes. The College Board has been developing the new CS — Dr. Jeff Gray Principles as another option to the current AP computer science course, which is heavily focused on learning the computer programming language Java.

“The current AP course is deep, but you typically don’t learn a lot about computer science at a broader level,” Gray said. “You just

learn how to program in Java.”

CS Principles introduces students to a broad range of computer science topics, from how algorithms and the Internet work to how technology is constantly changing the world. “The new course is broader, so students learn a lot more topics in a way that is creative and impactful,” he said.

As part of the program, Gray started teaching CS Principles at UA. The College Board requires universities to offer college credit for corresponding courses to make the new course and exam successful.

The hope is that the new course will entice more students from different backgrounds into a computer science classroom. About 15 percent of students who sit for the current AP computer science exam are women or underrepresented minorities, Gray said.

“We’re trying to get more diversity by getting more people in the pipeline,” he said. “If we don’t build the pipeline in kindergarten, fifth grade and all the way up, we’re never going to have the desired diversity in the workforce.”

Though the AP exam won’t be administered till the 2016-17 academic year, already some 500 schools across the nation offer the course. Among the 50 high schools that are starting to teach the new course, about 47 percent of the students are young women or underrepresented minorities. “That’s unheard of in computer science,” Gray said.

At UA, Gray also teaches a version of the CS Principles course that is nearly 70 percent women.

High school teacher training With funding from NSF and working with a statewide education group, A+ College Ready, Gray has helped train about 50 teachers the past three years across the state to teach CS Principles, which is already offered in some schools. He has led year-round professional development activities for the group. The teachers have, in turn, trained others.

In Alabama, about four teachers taught the current AP computer science course in 2007. Now, 50 teachers are trained and offering the new CS Principles course across classrooms in Alabama. Over the 2015–16 school year, more than 1,200 Alabama students will enroll in the CS Principles course.

“When CS Principles hits, Alabama is going to have numbers that shock people,” he said. “We’ll pass states that are way ahead of us now with students taking the exam.”

In 2014, Google paid for Gray to scale up his training into what’s called a massive open online course, or MOOC. That year, about 1,200 teachers across the country were trained to teach CS Principles.

He continued to offer the course again in the summer of 2015 with teachers from 47 different states and 14 countries participating.

Dr. Jeff Gray hosts summer camps each year that teach computer science concepts to high school students. Activities include programming robots.

{ Capstone Capstone Engineer Engineer •• Fall Fall 2015 2015 }

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{ The University of Alabama }

In fact, Google sponsored programs in five other states — California, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana and Texas — that used Gray’s MOOC as an online foundation. Teachers meet with specialists in their home states for a weeklong, face-to-face meeting that provides additional instruction.

“This is the only realistic way to do this type of training when the teachers are geographically dispersed,” Gray said.

“The financial cost, and the extensive commitment by teachers to be away from their family, makes an extended, face-to-face training unfeasible.”

In another effort, Gray and colleagues at Duke and Rutgers universities just started a new NSF project focused on teaching methods that help to make computer science more engaging to students. Their first workshop in Dallas, Texas, this past summer showed teachers from across the U.S. how to use cooperative learning strategies to give everyone in the classroom a voice as a participant.

Training elementary teachers

Gray said. “You have to learn it somewhere, so we can either teach it here or it could be done in K–5.”

Directly with students Besides training teachers, Gray also works directly with students. For the past five years, he and his team at UA have hosted the Alabama Robotics Contest. In its first year, about 25 students competed. This past year, close to 400 students from school teams across the state came to campus, with an additional 300 parents and teachers.

Unlike at other robotics competitions, students are not judged on building the robot but on how the robot performs in obstacle courses. Students program the robots at a computer before watching the robots autonomously carry out their instructions on the playing field.

“It’s a programming contest within the context of a robotics competition,” Gray said.

“We take a fun context and make it exciting for the students, but they are still learning the fundamentals.”

He also hosts summer camps for high school students, who apply from across the U.S. Students are taught multiple topics of computer science while learning to program a computer in several exciting contexts such as video games, robotics and smartphone — Dr. Jeff Gray apps. The 2015 camps had students from 13 states coming to Tuscaloosa to attend the camps.

Gray is a mentor, too, to four or five high school students a year, prepping them for the International Science Fair. He sees that as an extension of the research mentoring he does with UA undergraduates through the Emerging Scholars program and his graduate students.

“The original motivation was having mentors in my life and trying to be that for others,” Gray said. “I get a kick out of seeing a kid who’s not sure what they want to do in life, and then seeing them react with excitement about the new potential they have to creatively explore new opportunities through computing.”

“I get a kick out of seeing a kid who’s not sure what they want to do in life, and then seeing them react with excitement about the new potential they have to creatively explore new opportunities through computing.”

Working with Code.org this past year, Gray traveled across the state to lead training workshops for about 550 elementary-level teachers, hoping to get them to incorporate ideas from computer science into their curriculum. Workshops were added to the schedule as word got out.

“I could quit my job right now and do nothing but teach elementary schools across the state because the demand is so high,” Gray said. “Those teachers are really excited about it.”

Unlike his advocacy in high schools where he works to get an entire course offered, Gray said teachers in the elementary schools can give about 20 hours for coding or computer science instruction in a year, perhaps more for gifted classes. The more done in the primary and secondary grades, the less that could be needed at the university level, he said. “The same thing I’m teaching my freshmen class — loops and if statements — we’re now teaching in fifth grade,”

{ Capstone Engineer • Fall 2015 }

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Alumni Dynamics Items of interest to Capstone engineers and computer scientists

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Alumni Dynamics

From left, the 2015 Distinguished Engineering Fellows are Donald “Krash” Kaderbek Jr., Dr. Huban Aspie Gowadia, Sheila S. Sharp, Felicia Riggs Cook and Lars D. Ericsson.

UA honors five Distinguished Engineering Fellows

The University of Alabama College of Engineering honored five alumni by inducting them into its 2015 class of Distinguished Engineering Fellows.

Each year, the College of Engineering inducts a select group of alumni and friends as Distinguished Engineering Fellows. Recognition as a Distinguished Engineering Fellow is the highest commendation given to graduates and others who have strengthened the reputation of the College of Engineering through their efforts.

Since the recognition’s inception more than 25 years ago, fewer than 400 individuals have been recognized as Distinguished Engineering Fellows.

The 2015 class includes Felicia Riggs Cook, of Huntsville; Lars D. Ericsson, of Huntsville; Dr. Huban A. Gowadia, of Arlington, Virginia; Donald J. Kaderbek Jr., of Guyton, Georgia; and Sheila S. Sharp, of Huntsville.

The inductees were honored April 11 at a ceremony at the Embassy Suites in downtown Tuscaloosa. For complete biographies of this year’s Distinguished Engineering Fellows, visit eng.ua.edu/awards Felicia Riggs Cook, executive vice president, Venturi Inc., has spent her career in support of our nation’s soldiers. Cook developed and implemented innovative solutions to challenging problems, along the way strengthening national defense. She graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from the University in 1985, and she began her

career as a civilian engineer for the United States Army. In her time with the Army’s Missile Research Development and Engineering Center in Huntsville, Cook oversaw missiles from the concept-development phase to the sustainment phase, seeing missiles she helped develop have success on the battlefield. In 2013, she retired as deputy program manager of Cruise Missile Defense Systems for the Army’s Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space.

Lars D. Ericsson, chief of the Technical Management Division for the Army’s Project Manager for Unmanned Aircraft Systems at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, has played a critical role in developing the United States’ drone capabilities, helping soldiers on the battlefield, contributing to our nation’s intelligence gathering and strengthening of the national defense. He graduated from the Capstone in 1986 with a degree in aerospace engineering, and he began working on unmanned flight defense projects. He would later lead a team that developed the first unmanned vehicle to pass a formal operational test for the U.S. Department of Defense. He is a proven leader in aviation science, and he has successfully managed more than $150 million in defense investments. .

Dr. Huban Aspie Gowadia, director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering from UA in 1993.

She went to graduate school at Pennsylvania State University, where she had the opportunity to apply her knowledge of aerodynamics and thermal sciences to the design of an explosives detection system, which began her career in aviation security. Working for the FAA on 9/11 Continued on Page 30

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Alumni Dynamics

Ronald Anthony “Tony” McLain is the 2015 Outstanding Alumni Volunteer. Among other volunteer efforts, McLain has chaired the CES Golf Tournament Committee three times.

strengthened her motivation to dedicate herself to homeland security.

Her contributions led to her appointment by President Barack Obama to be director of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office within the Department of Homeland Security in 2013. Her office has a singular focus to protect the country from the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Retired Lt. Col. Donald “Krash” Kaderbek Jr. is a decorated fighter aviator. He spent more than 20 years serving our country with the United States Air Force, retiring in 2009 as commander for the 46th Operational Support Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

He received his bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech and shortly after joined the U.S. Air Force. While on active duty, he completed his master’s degree in aerospace engineering from The University of Alabama in 1999. During his service in the Air Force, Kaderbek accumulated more than 1,900 hours in 25 different types of aircraft, including enforcing international no-fly zones mandated by the United Nations and training U.S. and international forces for Operation Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Since retirement, Kaderbek has held a number of positions within the aerospace industry. He is a flight-test manager with the Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. in Savannah, Georgia.

Sheila S. Sharp, Integration and Test IPT manager of Systems Engineering, Space Launch System, with the Boeing Co., went from a NASA engineer trainee to leading a team responsible for critical components of the United States’ next generation of space vehicles.

Since graduating with a bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering from The University of Alabama in 1996, Sharp has acquired broad, technical-domain experience and expertise in engineering 30

{ The University of Alabama }

management and chief-engineer positions with the Boeing Co. In 2009, after years working on projects such as the International Space Station and Missile Defense System, she began working on the rockets designed to launch Americans into the next phase of space exploration.

Sharp is senior leader for Space Launch Systems Engineering, Integration and Test IPT. She leads an integrated team of about 250 members responsible for the requirements, design compliance, verification and design certification of the Space Launch System Core Stage.

McLain recognized as Outstanding Alumni Volunteer

In 1995, The University of Alabama College of Engineering began a yearly tradition recognizing alumni who provided excellent volunteer assistance to the College as the Outstanding Alumni Volunteer. The 2015 Outstanding Alumni Volunteer award recipient is Ronald Anthony “Tony” McLain.

McLain has demonstrated his consistent loyalty to UA’s College of Engineering since his graduation. He is an active member of the Capstone Engineering Society, serving on its board of directors since 2004.

He has served on the CES Golf Tournament committee, having chaired it in 2011, 2013 and 2015. Under his leadership in 2013 and 2015 the tournament raised more than $40,000 for scholarships.

He has also donated his time to meet with students during the CES Networking Receptions and is currently mentoring two students

Alumni Dynamics

Selina S. Lee was elected chair of the CES Board of Directors at its spring meeting. She has been part of the board since 2003.

through the College’s Mentor UPP: Undergraduate Professional Partnering Program.

When he lived in Dallas, Texas, he was president of UA’s North Texas Alumni Association and also served on the student-recruitment committee of the local chapter. Now living in Atlanta, Georgia, McLain and his wife, Tammy, are heavily involved with the UA Alumni and Booster Club of Atlanta. The couple have organized the alumni chapter’s scholarship fundraising for the Bama Pep Rally and silent auction. They assist University recruiters with college fairs and other recruitment activities that included organizing a fall kickoff for about 500 Atlanta-area freshmen in 2014.

McLain graduated from the Capstone with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1994 and joined American Cast Iron Pipe Co. in 1995 as a sales engineer in Dallas. He is now the distribution territory manager for American’s Atlanta District Sales Office. He is a proven professional with 20 years’ experience building mutually beneficial relationships and with experience in project management, personnel management, sales negotiations and development of American’s distribution network in a new territory.

Lee tapped to head CES Board of Directors

While a member of CES, she has served on the Outstanding Senior Selection Committee, has participated at CES Networking Receptions and is an alumni mentor in the Mentor UPP: Undergraduate Professional Program. This year, she coordinated a luncheon at the Alabama Power corporate office in Birmingham, Alabama, with administrators from the College of Engineering and about 75 UA alumni who work for Alabama Power or Southern Co. Lee joined Alabama Power Co. after graduating from UA and is currently the Eastern Division distribution general manager in Anniston, Alabama. Previously, she was a distribution support manager, the assistant to the senior vice president of Power Delivery, a transmission line maintenance supervisor and a distribution engineering supervisor.

She has been chair-elect for CES the past two years and will serve a two-year term as chair before rotating to past-chair status.

Lee replaces Milton Davis, BSChE ’81, and director of Business Development Industrial at B.L. Harbert International, who served as CES chair for the past two years.

Selina S. Lee was elected chair of the Capstone Engineering Society board of directors at its spring meeting. Lee earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UA in 1990 and has been part of the CES Board of Directors since 2003.

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Alumni Dynamics

Vicki Hollub

Rear Adm. Charles A. “Chas” Richard

Alumni Notes 1964

Frank R. Villafaña, BSIE, MSIE ’67, released his fifth book, “Rice with Mango.”

1971

Dr. Reggie J. Caduill, BSME ’71 and MSME ’73, was appointed dean of the New Jersey Institute of Technology School of Management.

1981

Vicki Hollub, BSMinE (Pet.) was named the next CEO of Occidental Petroleum.

Currently she is senior executive vice president of Oxy Oil and Gas. She will succeed the current CEO after his retirement in 2016.

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{ The University of Alabama }

Raul Sesin

Jobs. Promotions. Awards.

1982

Rear Adm. Charles A. “Chas” Richard, BSEE, was assigned as director, Undersea Warfare on the Chief of Naval Operations staff at the Pentagon.

Previously he was commander of Submarine Group Ten.

1984

Dr. Jenn-Tai Lang, MSMinE (Pet.) was named the John E. and Deborah F. Bethancourt Professor in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University.

1992

Dr. Jenn-Tai Lang

Dr. Christopher Yan-Chi Chow, BSEE, was honored as a Fellow by the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Chow is a physician in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

1993

Greg Ennis, BSME, was named Teacher of the Year by the Tennessee Valley chapter of the Air Force Association for work in STEM studies.

Ennis teaches engineering at James Clemons High School in Madison, Alabama.

Raul Sesin, BSCE, was appointed general manager of the Hidalgo County, Texas, Drainage District.

1996

Maury Brandon Hudson, BSChE, joined Liquefied Natural Gas Limited as vice president, Operations and Maintenance, at Magnolia LNG.

2000

Brad Ryan, MD, BSChE, joined Apervita, a medical analytics company, as chief commerce officer.

2014

Bradley Paterik, BSME, completed the U.S. Navy’s Office Candidate School and was assigned to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida to train as a naval aviator.

Something we missed?

Please send us your professional achievement and recognitions for inclusion in Alumni Notes by visiting eng.ua.edu/alumni/update.

Alumni Dynamics

Thomas Earl Diffee

Jack Whiting MacKay

In Memory Thomas Earl Diffee

Thomas Earl Diffee died April 8, 2015, in Birmingham, Alabama. A veteran of World War II, Diffee earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University in 1950. Afterward he worked for Alabama Power Co., eventually becoming manager of hydroelectric generation in 1985. He and his wife, Hazel Owen Diffee, helped found the Birmingham Educational Foundation for the Blind; he served as president of the organization for 15 years. He received many awards recognizing his contributions, including the Humanitarian Award in 1963 from B’nai Brith, and was twice nominated for the Birmingham Man of the Year Award.

William Reuben Hamby Jr.

William Reuben Hamby Jr. died June 19, 2015, in Houston, Texas. A native of Tallapoosa County, Alabama, Hamby joined the United States Army at age 17 and was a part of the 7th Infantry Division in Korea. He received a degree in petroleum engineering from the University in 1952 before returning to active duty in Southern France. When he returned to the U.S., Hamby spent 60 years in the oil and gas industry before retiring in 2012.

Maclin Sloss Kennemer Jr.

Maclin Sloss Kennemer Jr. died Jan. 8, 2015, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. A native of Athens, Alabama, Kennemer served in the U. S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from UA in 1948. He worked as a plant engineer with Ford Motor Co. and was a charter member of The University of Alabama’s Capstone Engineering Society.

Leonard Christopher Kyle Sr.

Leonard Christopher Kyle Sr. died June 21, 2015, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

During the summer after his freshman year at UA, Kyle began training

Thomas A. Zeiler

as a radar technician for the U.S. Navy. When the training program was discontinued, Kyle returned to the University and earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering in 1949. He was a member of Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society, Phi Delta Theta fraternity and the Million Dollar Band. After graduating, he worked for his father’s business, Kyle Office Supply Co. and eventually became president of the firm before retiring in 1991. .

Jack Whiting MacKay

Jack Whiting MacKay died Feb. 18, 2015, in Birmingham. After graduating with a degree in aeronautical engineering from the University in 1935, he spent 39 years working for the American Cast Iron Pipe Co., ultimately becoming vice president. He invented, patented and named the “fastite” pipe joint, now used on the majority of ACIPCO’s products.

He was also the co-inventor of the “Fastite” conductive gasket and the “Boltless Flexible” pipe joint. He was instrumental in getting ACIPCO into the manufacture of ductile iron pipe, steel pipe, and the valve and hydrant business. After retirement, he worked another 30 years as a consultant to his son’s company, Caldwell-MacKay Co. Inc. MacKay was in the inaugural class of UA Distinguished Engineering Fellows in 1988.

In 2011, he was inducted into the Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame.

Gary Stewart Osborn

Gary Stewart Osborn died April 18, 2015 in Mountain Brook, Alabama.

He received a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from UA in 1964, where he was also a member of Delta Chi fraternity. He spent his professional career working as a builder and contractor with TCI Sales and the C.S. Phillips Agency and eventually founded Osborn Enterprises.

Thomas A. Zeiler

Dr. Thomas A. Zeiler died July 10, 2015. He joined the College’s faculty in 1995. An associate professor in the department of aerospace engineering and mechanics, his research interests included dynamics of flexible

{ Capstone Engineer • Fall 2015 }

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Alumni Dynamics

flight vehicles, including multidisciplinary modeling, analysis, design, aeroservoelasticity, loads and dynamics of unrestrained flexible bodies.

He received his bachelor’s degree in aerospace and ocean engineering in 1978 from Virginia Tech, staying to earn a master’s degree in the same discipline in 1980. He went on to Purdue University, graduating with a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics engineering in 1985. Before coming to UA, he worked as an engineer with Planning Research

Corp. and then Lockheed Martin on a support-services contract with the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. In the UA department of aerospace engineering and mechanics, he was the undergraduate program coordinator and oversaw senior-design projects and teams. He was also a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Friends we will miss Jimmy Russell Bobo, BSME ’62

Kim David Eddins, BSEE ’90

Charles Lovelace Malone, BSIE ’51

Kenneth Earl Bolen, BSChE ’55

J. Tom Elgin, BSME ’65

L. Garner McDonald, BSMtE ’69

Gerald Bourque, MSE ’66

Jeremiah Ellsworth, MSE ’67

Laura Gaston Meade, BSIE ’49

J. Steven Boyd, BSMtE ’64

Robert Fleming Evans, BSCE ’66,

Phillip S. Mentz Jr., BSIE ’51

Richard Hamlin Boyd, BSEE ’71

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MSCE ’74

Wesley Eugene Perkins, BSEE ’61

Kenneth F. Brown Jr., BSEE ’57

Robert Parks Gilbert, BSIE ’49

Cecil Roberson Pickens, BSE ’42

S. Lee Brown, BSEE ’66

Virgil Thomas Greene, BSMinE ’49

Ronald James Reynolds, BSEE ’61

Lucius Gerald Bullard, BSE ’66, MSE ’69

George Peter Hall, BSAE ’43

Herbert L. Richard, BSEE ’55

Frank Edgar Bunce, BSAE ’41

James Ennis Harris, BSAE ’64

Larry B. Richardson Jr., BSME ’58

Samuel Carl Burkhalter, BSME ’40

Donald Oliver Hill, MSChE ’71, PhD ’74

E. Doyle Shaw, BSME ’59

Tommy Joe Capps, BSIE ’59

George Earling Hjorth, BSIE ’49

Thomas Algene Carnes, BSChE ’56

Homer Terry Hubbard, BSME ’68

Charles Nelson Sherer, BSCE ’77, MSMngE ’81

Gerald Jones Lee Coker, BSCE ’78

Eddie Jay Hudson, BSME ’49

R. Normal Coker, BSCE ’50

Andrew Haile Jenkins, MSE ’65

Charles Justin Coleman, BSEE ’91

Toby David Leamon, BSCE ’75

John Lester Davis Jr., BSCE ’63

H. William Licht, BSAE ’41

James Michael Donnini, BSMinE ’51

Leland Douglas Maddox, BSE ’69

{ The University of Alabama }

Paul P. Stassi, BSAE ’47 Winsor Howell Swearingen, BSME ’58 J. Bradford Walker Jr., BS ’62, BSCE ’68 A. James Warren Jr., BSME ’48, MSME ’49 David Wetterau, BSCE ’48 Peter Michael Willemoes, BSCE ’84

Bits and Bytes

Bits and Bytes The College from outside “We’re taking all the mathematical models, all the predictive models and all the data that is coming in from diverse sources and putting it together in a way that can be used. I don’t think that’s ever been done before.” —Dr. Andrew Ernest, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering and director of the Environmental Institute, on WIAT CBS 42 about the National Flood Interoperability Experiment Summer Institute held at the National Water Center on campus. About 50 graduate students from across the nation gathered to gain a greater understanding of flood forecasting and create a forecast simulation and modeling tool.

“It doesn’t mean they’re ready to fall all around us. But it’s an indication that it’s deteriorating. It’s part of the freeze and thaw cycles. It’s just going to happen.”—Dr. Michael Kreger, the Garry Neil Drummond Endowed Chair in Civil Engineering and director of the Large-Scale Structures Laboratory, in the article “State to inspect aging bridges after overpass concrete falls on car” in the Baltimore Sun.

Tweetgineering —

“If you have failures that you’re concerned about, once you find out statistically what those issues are over and over again, you attack those carefully. I don’t accept that inevitably something is going to happen.

You can always figure out what’s going to happen and proceed to do it better.” —Dr. Philip Johnson, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, on the need for better data collection on oil spills in the article “Debate Rages Over Keystone and Offshore Drilling, Yet Data Lacking” in U.S. News & World Report.

“One potential application I’m really excited about is helicopters. The retreating blade as it flies forward has a problem with flow separation, so I envision this could be some sort of tape that could be applied to the rotor blade.” —Dr. Amy Lang, associate professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics, on her research into shark scales on the show “Daily Planet” aired on Discovery Canada.

Because engineers use Twitter, too

“Two guys almost just fought over linear operators in my electric networks class. #engineeringproblems.” — Savannah Widner, senior in electrical engineering “Just saw two engineering professors in sport coats and not the usual t-shirt.

Something big is happening. #BraceYourself.” —Craig Burns, BSChE ’15 “Freshmen bonding over broken code … makes me fuzzy inside.”

—Tarif Haque, BSCS ’15

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End User

End User

Capstone engineers and computer scientists on today’s technology In 2014, Dr. Richard Branam joined the faculty at The University of Alabama College of Engineering after 25 years in the Air Force, where he served as a researcher and engineer, retiring as a lieutenant colonel. In the Air Force, he was the principal engineer and program manager for the Upper Stage Demo Rocket Engine, a part of an initiative with the Department of Defense to double U.S. rocket propulsion capability.

Work on that project has led to funded research with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center on new rocket technology. Branam is pursuing a dual-expander-engine architecture. This LOX Expansion Cycle, or LEC, rocket-engine concept employs two expander cycles, one each to pump the fuel and oxidizer. The LEC will serve as an orbit-transfer engine to propel a payload from low earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit or to achieve escape velocity for interplanetary missions.

CE: Where are you right now with the LEC technology?

Branam: We’re employing industry-standard design tools to create a model of an upper-stage engine, and then we will operate that engine in a simulation to determine optimal design variables.

The objective for the LEC is double the current capability for orbit transfer by increasing thrust-to-weight while maximizing performance.

CE: We’re basically using the same technology as when Werner von Braun was in Huntsville working on rockets in the ’60s. Why is that? Because is works?

Branam: Right. It’s reliable, and they know a lot about the current systems. It costs this much, and they know how to build them.

Developing a new engine is expensive.

CE: Then why do we need new and better rockets? Is there a problem with the current technology?

Branam: This is about increasing mass of the payload. There’s what we can do now, and then there is the LEC technology — this engine enables new capabilities. For the same tank and structure, if we increase the performance of the engine by just 1 percent, then we increase the payload of current U.S. launch vehicles by as much as 5 percent, enough to add another transponder to a communication satellite or about 10 university satellites.

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{ The University of Alabama }

The current technology will get about a ton of mass onto the surface of Mars. The LEC engine would let them do much, much more than that — two or three times more. It’s an enabler to meet the needs of the future of spaceflight and exploration.

CES Message

Greetings alumni and friends, My favorite time of the academic year is when the students return for the fall semester. There is an excitement in the air, and I love seeing so many familiar faces along with so many new students.

The College of Engineering has had a great start to the fall semester.

As of this writing, I am excited to share that the Collegewide mentoring and networking program, Mentor UPP: Undergraduate Peer Program, has almost 500 students participating in the undergraduate program.

To give you an idea of the program’s growth, there were 392 students active in the 2014–15 peer program. In the peer program, juniors, seniors and a few sophomores mentor freshmen, sophomores and transfer student from different disciplines to help them adjust to life and academics at the University and specifically in the College of Engineering. The program’s goal is to provide new students with an instant connection and peer support, while upperclassmen develop leadership and networking skills.

In the fall of 2014, we launched the alumni-student component called Mentor UPP: Undergraduate Professional Program. There were 112 student mentees and 77 alumni mentors. The alumni mentors provided guidance and support to the student mentees as they prepare to move from college to career.

Mentor UPP is just one of the ways the Capstone Engineering Society is reaching out to our students and alumni. If you are interested in participating in Mentor UPP, please apply at mentoring.eng.ua.edu.

The CES will be sharing other opportunities to get engaged with the College of Engineering alumni and our students in the coming weeks.

I am so proud to be a part of the Mentor UPP program’s success and the difference it is making in our students’ lives.

Roll Tide!

Nancy N. Holmes Manager, Capstone Engineering Society

{ Capstone Engineer • Fall 2015 }

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Capstone Engineering Society College of Engineering Box 870200 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0200

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