Author: Leah Lamunyon

Three students and two faculty members from the School of Computing in the College of Engineering attended the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) Job Fair in Washington, D.C. from Jan. 8-10. The attendees had the opportunity to meet with representatives from various federal agencies, tour the capital and meet Kansas Senator Jerry Moran.

The students, Ivan Macias, Jacob Smith and Elizabeth Wilson, were previously selected by the SFS program as the 2023 CyberCorps Scholars from WSU. Funded through National Science Foundation (NSF) grants, the program provides scholarships for up to three years of support for cybersecurity undergraduate and graduate education. In return for their scholarships, recipients agree to work after graduation for the United States Government, in a position related to cybersecurity, for a period equal to the length of the scholarship. Dr. Sergio Salinas, an associate professor in the School of Computing, and Joe Jabara, the director of cybersecurity education in the School of Computing, accompanied the students.

On Friday, Nov. 17, participating College of Engineering students presented their research during the annual Engineering Research Symposium in the John Bardo Center lobby. On Tuesday, Dec. 5, the winners were announced, including three first-place winners:

• Novice category: Saket Chand Mathur (mechanical engineering doctorate student) with the research title, “Additive Manufacturing of Thermally Stable Parts for Aerospace Applications Using Polymer Derived Ceramics”
• Emerging category: Sarangan Rajendran (electrical and computer engineering doctorate student) with the research title, “Locational Value of Distributed Energy Resources for Mitigating High Impact Events”
• Proficient category: Anoop Krishnan Upendran Nair (School of Computing doctorate student) with the research title, “Mitigating Gender Classification Bias With Consistent Regularization”

The College of Engineering and Barton School of Business are joining together to offer an introductory AI course this coming spring. The new course, “Generative AI for Problem Solving,” will cover practical applications and novel use cases for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. The course will also analyze the ethical, professional and social implications of the advancement of AI.

The class (ENGR 150A/BSAN 150A) will meet from 2 to 3:15 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and is open to students from any college with no prerequisites or programming background required. To search for the course, students may use CRN 26636 and CRN 26637 respectively. For questions or override approval, contact Nathan Smith at nathan.smith@wichita.edu.

The Mentorship 360 team is inviting any faculty, staff and administrators to attend the Mentorship 360 Lunch and Learn Closing Symposium at 11:30 a.m. Monday, Dec. 11 in 266 Rhatigan Student Center, Pike Room. The event will feature seven College of Engineering faculty members, including Samantha Corcoran, Dr. Yimesker Yihun, Dr. Cindi Mason, Dr. Lindsey Ott, Dr. Rajeev Nair, Dr. Ehsan Salari and Dr. Yang-Seon Kim.

The Mentorship 360 team within the College of Engineering at WSU is composed of Dr. Yimesker Yihun, Dr. Wei Wei, Dr. Yang-Seon Kim and Dr. Rajeev Nair. The focus of Mentorship 360 teams is to facilitate engineering faculty success, and the Mentorship 360 program was born from the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) and the KEEN Engineering Unleashed community. The community includes more than 5,000 engineering faculty, staff and administrators who are dedicated to instilling an entrepreneurial mindset within undergraduate engineering students.

Those planning to attend the event should RSVP to wei.wei@wichita.edu by Thursday, Dec. 7.

The College of Engineering is hosting its fall 2023 Engineering Open House event from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 8 in the John Bardo Center. Freshmen will feature their projects on the first floor from 10 a.m. to noon, with senior design projects and other student projects on the second and third floors for the length of the event.

Students, staff, faculty and individuals from both Innovation Campus partners and community organizations are invited to attend. The event is an opportunity for students to showcase their work and practice presentation skills, for staff and faculty to show their support, and for companies and organizations to see the work our students are doing, as well as interact with prospective job candidates.

The College of Engineering has been ranked 18th nationally out of 521 colleges and universities in the Cyber Power Rankings, which were created by Cyber Skyline in partnership with the National Cyber League (NCL). The rankings represent the ability of students to perform real-world cybersecurity tasks on the Cyber Skyline platform.

Cybersecurity students from the School of Computing within the College of Engineering competed in the NCL competition throughout the fall 2023 season. Teams and their rankings were as follows:

• World Wide Wheat (Khang Tran, Quentin Nelson, Carlos Figuerora, Adrian Yip, Hyacinthe Howell, Aidan McGillivray): 15th
• TH3 3 H4CK3T33R5 (Prem Muvva, Don Alfaro, Nikilesh Murthy): 34th
• Annie Linux and the Ctrl Fs (Josh Brenner, Arron Russell, Seth Windsor, Ke’Auna Edmondson, Annie Wilson, Emily Evans, Brandon Castile): 56th
• System Shockers (Ana Varghese, Michael Foster, Hao Yin, Devon Crawford, Hao Slaine, Divy Patel): 60th in the advanced division
• Pink Team (Hannah Brumley, Thao Pham, Leopoldo Picazo, Priscila Picazo, Micah Wallace, Jose Guiterrez, Peter Saw): 80th
• Bluey (Drew Nguyen, Phillip Espinosa, Alejandro Valdovinos, Oriol Guillen, Carolyn Tran, Trevor Schmitt, Yoel Woldeyes): 108th
• Yetistan Natives (Marshall Morris, Jacob Smith, Eli Curry, Jerret Delancy, Landon Conyers, Alexander Pickett, Cole Carothers): 113th

On Friday, Nov. 16, the College of Engineering will host about 170 high school seniors and 220 parents for the Wallace Invitational for Scholarships in Engineering (WISE) competition. All mandatory events will occur from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the second and third floors of the Rhatigan Student Center with optional events occurring from 1 to 3 p.m. in the John Bardo Center.

Although a private event, staff and faculty are encouraged to have positive interactions with the students and their parents when in common areas. According to the College of Engineering, the WISE competition is one of its largest recruiting events annually.

Sway Medical, a medical software company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been working with two College of Engineering faculty members and a staff member to validate an app the company has developed. The app, designed for iPhones, iPads and Android devices, is designed to quantify human motion in clinical settings.

“The College of Engineering is dedicated to enhancing its research through engagement, strategic partnerships and collaborations with local and global companies and organizations, such as Sway Medical,” said Dr. Michael Jorgensen, professor in the Industrial, Systems and Manufacturing Engineering Department, who has been working with the company.

Sway Medical has also been working closely with Dr. Nils Hakannson, an associate professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department, and Richard Sack, the manager of the Project Innovation Hub. In their work, Jorgensen, Hakannson and Sack have utilized a robotic arm and the infrared motion capture system in the Multidisciplinary Human Biomechanics and Design Lab of the John Bardo Center to validate the app, comparing the motion created by the robotic arm while holding various devices running the app to the data produced by the motion capture system.

Last week, a team from Sway Medical visited the Multidisciplinary Human Biomechanics and Design Lab to continue the work with real human movement, which will be input into the robotic arm and evaluated for accuracy compared with the motion capture system. The company’s CEO, Chase Curtiss, wore monitors while moving the various devices that were running the company’s app. Jorgensen, Hakannson and Sack were monitoring the data produced by the motion capture system and will continue to consult with the company on the results.

Four College of Engineering students traveled to Tampa, Florida, to attend the Collegiate Entrepreneur’s Organization (CEO) national conference and global pitch competition Nov. 2-4. The students had previously won the 2023 Koch Innovation Challenge, and their team, ViBracelet, was selected out of about 300 teams to advance with about 100 other teams to the conference and competition.

At the competition, the students presented a working prototype of their big idea venture, the ViBracelet, which is a wearable vibration alarm that gives members of the deaf community a safe and reliable way to wake up from sleep. The team is comprised of JC Wright (aerospace engineering), Trinity Madden (formerly engineering technology, now applied engineering), Will Panakos (product design and manufacturing engineering) and Loralei McClure (product design and manufacturing engineering).

Although the team did not advance to the top 25 in the competition, they performed well and made connections with potential partners and investors. Prior to the competition, Nancy Kersenbrock, assistant director of the Center for Entrepreneurship, and Doug Stucky, the manager of program and development for the College of Innovation and Design, provided mentorship related to developing a business model and pitching their big idea venture.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering within the College of Engineering is hosting Dr. A.J. Mellott, the CEO of Overland Park-based biotechnology company, Ronawk, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 17 in 134 Woolsey Hall.

Mellott will present “Generating Tissue-Mimetic Environments to Accelerate Next-Generation Therapies: A Journey from Academia to Entrepreneurship” to students, staff, faculty and industry partners. The lecture will be from 2 to 3 p.m., followed by refreshments and networking from 3 to 3:30 p.m.