Engineering

Fall 2009

Elevating engineering in the schools

Sean Neal is good at math, but one bit of geometry he can’t master involves moving ten feet up and two feet over. The wheelchair-bound teen isn’t able to climb into a combine to help harvest his family’s wheat fields.

While Neal’s dad was carrying him up a ladder and helping him into the operator’s seat, his math teacher at Garfield-Palouse High School was pondering ways to nudge students toward careers in which they could use their number-crunching skills. Jim Stewart thought an engineering design contest might do the trick. A former baseball coach, Stewart knows kids like to compete. Sure enough, his Gar-Pal design … » More …

Spring 2009

A long-term biofuels strategy for Washington

In 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed legislation “relating to providing for the means to encourage the use of cleaner energy.” The final of four chapters of the renewable energy act directed Washington State University to explore the development of biofuels in Washington. The final result, Biofuel Economics and Policy for Washington State, released in late 2008, does not quite match what some state policy makers had expected, notes lead author Jon Yoder, a natural resource economist at WSU.

In short, the report recommends that Washington not try to force itself into the current biofuel market. With what are considered “first-generation” biofuels, such as ethanol, … » More …

Spring 2009

A gift toward fuel research

Oil industry executive Gene Voiland ‘69 and his wife Linda have promised $17.5 million to Washington State University’s School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, contributing to the school’s focus on energy research.

An immediate $2.5 million gift will allow the school to hire faculty who will focus on transforming agricultural and municipal waste into useful fuels and chemicals.

In the pressing challenge to develop clean and sustainable energy sources, researchers are looking for alternative energy solutions that can employ the existing petroleum-based infrastructure. Municipal and agricultural waste can be converted to fuels that look and perform just like gasoline or fuel oil. But, because … » More …

Spring 2009

The webs we weave

Every time you board a plane, turn on a light, or chat with a neighbor, you become part of a network: the air traffic system, the power grid, the pool of possible victims of a virus.

To Sandip Roy, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Washington State University, and his graduate student, Yan Wan (’08 Ph.D.), such networks have a lot in common. They’re all composed of distinct points, with every point connected, directly or indirectly, to every other point. Like a spider web, if you pluck one strand of the network, the whole web jiggles.

By devising mathematical equations … » More …

Fall 2008

Powerful solutions from young minds

At Washington State University’s inaugural high school energy competition on May 10, Bohler Gymnasium on the Pullman campus buzzed with the ideas and enthusiasm of more than 350 high school students.

Teams from across the state were invited to present ideas for sustainable living in one of four areas: technology, design, personal behavior, or society/public policy.

Image depicting a light bulb sparking ideas and therefore solutions

Eighty-six teams gathered to share ideas that ranged from … » More …

Spring 2006

Doggy Dream House

Basil was a dog in need of a home. And with just 30 hours to assess the whippet’s personality and create and execute a design, a group of Washington State University design students were determined to give him one.

It was an intense competition with “a tremendously difficult timeline,” says Keith Diaz Moore, assistant professor of architecture and landscape architecture, who coordinated the annual design-challenge charrette for the Interdisciplinary Design Institute. “To complete everything in 30 hours is pretty amazing—and to see the delicacy of some of these solutions is fascinating.”

More than 100 students from a variety of disciplines—architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and … » More …

Fall 2002

It takes a village to raise an engineer

In two months spent as a participant in the Boeing A. D. Welliver Faculty Summer Fellowship, I observed that there is more to the development of an engineer than just formulas and lectures.

In spite of the recent downturn in the economy, the demand for engineers in the workforce has remained fairly strong. Yet the enrollment in the nation’s engineering programs has been flat and retention of students low, with less than half of entering engineering students receiving engineering degrees. Prospective engineers are attracted because of their curiosity about the way things work and their problem-solving creativity, but they often drop out of engineering programs … » More …

Spring 2002

Maloney honored for contributions to wood materials engineering

Growing up in the mill town of Raymond, Washington, alumnus Thomas M. Maloney may have been destined to wind up in the wood products industry. In fact, he spent his entire professional career at Washington State University working with wood.

Now professor emeritus, Maloney was director of the Wood Materials Engineering Laboratory in the College of Engineering and Architecture from 1972 until 1996. Last summer, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the International Society of Wood Science and Technology for his “extraordinary career contributions to the wood science and technology profession.”

Earning a degree in industrial arts at Washington State in 1956, Maloney led … » More …

Spring 2002

Better chow

As anyone who has stir-fried vegetables knows, quickly cooking foods at high temperatures makes for crisper, fresher-tasting foods than using slow-cooking methods.

So it is that over the past six years, associate professor of biological systems engineering Juming Tang and his associates have been working on new technologies to produce high-quality, ready-to-eat military rations (MREs) and “humanitarian daily rations” like those recently air-dropped in Afghanistan.

With conventional methods, lengthy processing times are necessary to kill harmful bacteria that can thrive even in hermetically sealed packages. Depending on package size and type of food, traditional processing can take anywhere from one to two hours. By the … » More …