The Padnos College of Engineering and Computing provides more than just an education; it provides a strong foundation of both theory and practice through extensive experiential learning. From the freshman year straight through graduate studies, our students solve real-world problems for real people and they are making an impact today. Our students push the limits of their academics and become innovators and entrepreneurs, winning competitions, founding start-up companies, and becoming leaders in their field. A school founded on an integrated relationship with industry, over 200 local partner organizations help to provide such opportunities and inspiration. Behind the scenes, our faculty members are highly active in cutting-edge research, having been awarded more than $750,000 in grants over the past five years. Members of the Padnos College push beyond the main directive of education and scholarship by sharing their knowledge and investing in future generations though a variety of community outreach programs centered on STEM fields. The stories you will read in this newsletter are not just about achievement, but are also about empathy, community, collaboration, environmentalism, and the catalysts for positive change. Below you will find both heartwarming and intriguing stories that have profoundly affected the lives of those involved. If you don’t believe me, just read about what our students and faculty have done for 2-year old Lylah Gritter!

A group of product design and manufacturing engineering students at Grand Valley State University have designed a device for children with type I spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The device, which has been named a Play and Mobility Device, allows those who have SMA between the ages of 0 to 3 to move and be independent.

Read the Lanthorn Article

Watch the Video

From a project-based pedagogy perspective, Dr. Brent Nowak describes the need for experiential learning and how students apply that knowledge to real-world problems, while improving the lives of individuals.

“As engineering education experiences a doubling of engineering and scientific knowledge every 10 years (NAE, 2014), we also face the need for “… biomedical engineers … [to] also have the ability to translate new devices and technologies from the laboratory bench to the bedside …” (NIH, 2014). It has been estimated that without new teaching strategies the engineering curriculum growth could lead to as much as a 7-year engineering degree program (Felder, et al., 1998, 2000).  GVSU’s School of Engineering employs project-based learning (PBL) pedagogy that requires teams of students from different academic disciplines and sometimes of different academic years to develop medical devices that enhance learning, problem solving skills, and couple theory with practice more effectively.” 

“In EGR 403/503 Medical Device Design student teams address real-world problems. Team Angel Arms, (Joseph Kissling and Brooks Schaefer) developed devices, which augment the muscles of the arms for a 20 month old, suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. The curriculum and course deliverables addressed all of the requirements to bring the device from design through implementation, which included but was not limited to, design, development, fabrication, testing, FDA requirements, failure modes and effects analysis, root cause analysis, intellectual property protection, and cost of manufacturing documentation sufficient for commercialization. The growing engineering and scientific knowledge provides an opportunity to create new and novel solutions; GVSU’s PBL pedagogy manifests that growing knowledge as medical devices for the benefit of society.”

Read the Abstract

Professor Paul Jorgensen will participate in the tenth Model-Based Testing Workshop, in London, England on April 18. This workshop is by invitation, and is heavily academic, with a very distinguished board. he will present ” A Visual Formalism for Interacting Systems.”

Read the Full Story

GVSU’s Occupational Safety and Health Program were recently contacted by a national trade organization to provide safety and health training for its member companies.  The Brewers Association, based in Boulder Colorado contracted with the OSH department, via an approximately $7,000 grant, to revise an online safety and health training program for their over 2,300 member breweries. The online training materials were originally created for Michigan craft breweries through a series of grants from the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  Revisions in the content were needed to make the training applicable to a national audience.  Student workers were utilized to carry out the specifics of the Brewers Association grant.  An OSH student worked at reformatting the original scripts and quiz questions and a student from GVSU’s Film and Video program but together the video content.  Please contact Dave Huizen with any questions on the Brewers Association grant or the existing MIOSHA grant.

In the fall of 2012, Autocam president John C. Kennedy created the Autocam Engineering Scholarship to address the growing need for engineers with advanced manufacturing skills. Chris Foster and Leah Bauer, who were two of the first three recipients of the award, are in the final stages of their senior projects and are slated to graduate in mid-August. In addition to receiving full-tuition scholarships, Foster and Bauer also completed their three-term co-op rotations at Autocam. Foster and Bauer are pictured above at the May 2015 Commencement with Mr. Kennedy and GVSU President, Tom Haas. The scholarship demonstrates the College’s strong relationship with its industry partners and the importance of experiential learning in engineering education.

About the Autocam Engineering Scholarship

How to apply for the Autocam Engineering Scholarship

GVSU CIS graduate student David Qorashi had prior research experience in robot navigation as an undergraduate at his university in Iran. When it came to time to select his MS thesis topic he was fairly certain he wanted to do a more extensive study in this area. The purpose of David’s study is to develop an improved and more intuitive method of flying UAVs by supporting the use of hand gestures, and other non-traditional control modalities. The goal is to employ and test an end-to-end UAV system that provides an easy-to-use control interface for novice drone users.

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In mid-May, Grand Valley State University students competed in the Formula SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) international collegiate autocross car competition. The team of 25 students began the project in August 2014, meeting weekly to design, build and test their formula-style car. The team has raised $38,000 from sponsors in West Michigan, including the West Michigan SAE chapter and organizations throughout West Michigan.

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Graduate engineering student Eric Van Middendorp has been working with Spectrum Health Innovation to design a device that will help stabilize intubation tubes in patients and prevent them from being dislodged. The device that Van Middendorp developed has already won three innovation and entrepreneur competitions. Van Middendorp’s startup company, Airway Innovations, LLC, will use the funds to further development and production of the product.

Read the MIBiz Article

Read the MLive Article

Assistant professor Andrew Kalafut recently presented his work on DNS amplification attacks at the 2015 Passive and Active Measurement conference. Along with co-authors Craig Shue and Douglas MacFarland (from Worcester Polytechnic Institute), in this work Kalafut measured the potential of DNS amplification attacks, characterized the adoption of currently known defenses, and proposed a new defensive measure to mitigate the effects of these attacks.

Read the Full Story

Two Grand Valley students took first and third place at the GreenLight Michigan Business Model Competition, the conclusion of the statewide startup event series where participants pitch new business ideas to a panel of judges for a chance to win up to $50,000 in prizes. Eric VanMiddendorp, a graduate student majoring in mechanical engineering, won the grand prize of $25,000 for the project, ETT Holder. Mark Harburg, a junior majoring in product design and manufacturing engineering, took third place overall and first place in the undergraduate category and won $7,000 for the project, Safety Sit.

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Since 2013, a team of GVSU faculty and students have participated in the ongoing Orange Telecom Data 4 Development (D4D) Challenge. The competition provides restricted access to call/text mobile phone datasets (CDR) for Senegal and Ivory Coast. Research regarding developing countries is often difficult as areas are generally inaccessible or might not have current census details, national statistics, and available government funding for social programs. These D4D datasets from Orange Telecom help researchers understand how people live and move in places that are not easy to travel to or communicate with. Understanding how humans live in an area can lead to improvements in health, transportation, energy, and agriculture.

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Code Red Robotics, sponsored by GVSU, is a community-based robotics team comprised of area teenagers. Participants use high-tech gear to design and produce devices for improving the lives of others. From prosthetic hands to all-terrain wheelchairs, the Code Red Robotics teams are learning at an early age what it means to create positive change.

Learn more about Code Red: Watch the Video

Watch the Code Red team deliver all-terrain wheelchair to 12-year old: Online Video

Steve Derico graduated from GVSU in 2009 with a major in IS and a minor in business. Though Steve is a fairly recent graduate from our IS program, that has not stopped him from a number of notable accomplishments in the field.  In addition to starting a highly successful mobile app development agency, this past December Steve published his first book entitled “Introducing iOS 8″ with O’Reilly Media, a publisher very well known to software developers.

Read the Full Story

Computer Science senior, Cody Rivers, was invited to present at a Google Education Summit, which highlights the use of Google Apps in an education setting to enrich the learning experience. Rivers has been working with GVSU’s Team Web to develop tools for this purpose. Rivers stated that, “The idea behind my topic for the conference is educating students and teachers on how to utilize the web for technology-based education. Students and teachers are able to collaborate to create content for a subject and develop a website to present that information to peers and others around the world.”

For more information regarding the Google Education Summit visit: https://www.gafesummit.com

The Padnos College of Engineering and Computing annually hosts more than 40 high school teams participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition. Teams are given a starter kit and six weeks to design and build a robot to perform specific tasks. The 2015 challenge was called Recycle Rush.

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Since graduating in April of 2012, Alex Restrepo (MS in CIS) has managed to work on a number of high profile projects in Silicon Valley. From working as an iOS developer for companies such as startup Easily Do and Facebook. Always eager for opportunities to learn more and embark on new adventures, Alex recently joined the Oculus VR team.  At Oculus he works on the first party apps team for Samsung’s GearVR product, which is based on Oculus technology.

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Noah Edwards, son of GVSU staff member Dave Edwards, was selected as the recipient of the FIRST Robotics Engineering Scholarship. Edwards, from Shelby High School, participated in the 2015 FIRST Robotics Competition with his team, the White Lake “RoboSharks” #4956. In addition to the FIRST Scholarship, Edwards will be awarded two additional scholarships, including the GVSU Presidential Scholarship.

Watch the Video

Through the cooperative education component of Joe Gibson’s engineering degree, he was able to participate in three unique experiential experiences, including rotations at L-3 Communications, NASA, and CERN. Gibson talks about his experience in the Spring 2015 edition of Horizons Online.

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The "Celebrating Scholarship” video series explores the process and inspiration behind several GVSU faculty members in their pursuit of scholarly and creative practice. The interviews touch on why scholarship is important in both the classroom and the larger world in which we live. In the video below, Dr. Standridge discusses his projects in the energy sector.

Watch the Video

A biomedical engineering alumna received first place for her poster presentation at the 2015 Research Symposium May 20, hosted by the Office of Research Administration at Spectrum Health System. Nadia Sunny, from Bangladesh, presented her thesis on the durability of sutures used with suture clips to close tissues after surgery during a partial nephrectomy — a surgical procedure to remove part of a kidney. A suture is used to hold tissues together after a surgery.

Read the Article

“Seven months ago when I became a University Innovation Fellow, I did not realize the significant impact that the program would have on my education, career, and life.  Through the program training, students were exposed to other students making positive changes at their universities as well as supporting faculty and administrators who truly believed that students could be catalysts for change on campus. The training program allows students to assess the resources for innovation, entrepreneurship, and change on their campuses and in their communities. This allowed areas that needed improvement to be identified and projects to be designed around them. The largest, most prominent problem identified was the lack of communication and collaboration between departments at GVSU. For innovation to prosper interdisciplinary collaboration is essential, therefore, the interdisciplinary project group IDEA (Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship Alliance) was created. This group was built around the needs of students and is currently working with students and community groups to foster lasting positive change in the community through interdisciplinary collaboration.”

“Additionally, the University Innovation Fellows program provides the opportunity to attend regional and national meet-ups. These meet-ups provide a platform for fellows from across the nation to connect. Schools of all sizes, backgrounds, and specialties send their best and brightest students and faculty to learn and inspire others; some notable schools who also participate in this program are Stanford, Yale, University of California – Berkeley, Notre Dame, and University of Michigan. The meet-ups provide students with activities that challenge their comfort zones and traditional structured learning styles by encouraging creativity and design thinking. Not only are students challenged to gain new perspectives, they are also taught a plethora of methods that help bring back these methods to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship at their colleges and universities. Students are also able to connect with people across the nation doing similar activities, projects, and programs; this resource is invaluable by allowing students to learn from others mistakes and acting as an inspiration. The university innovation fellows program not only teaches students how to become better leaders, thinkers, and doers, it also gives them the necessary tools to teach other students to become better leaders, thinkers, and doers.“

New Tenure-track Faculty:

Arjumand Ali
Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Ali will join the faculty of the School of Engineering at GVSU this fall as an Assistant Professor. Most recently she has been a Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin – Platteville where she taught dynamics, mechanisms and machines, dynamical systems, and computational methods and automatic controls. Prof. Ali earned her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee where she researched techniques for the design of actively controlled structures including topological considerations.

Nick Baine
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering

Dr. Baine first joined the faculty at GVSU as a visiting faculty member during 2013-14, then was hired as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2014. He recently completed his second year on the faculty where he taught courses ranging from the first-year Introduction to Engineering Design, to Introduction to Digital Systems, to Automatic Control. Prof. Baine has a PhD in Engineering from Wright State University where his research established methods for integrity monitoring of navigation systems.

Brent Nowak
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Dr. Nowak first joined the faculty at GVSU as a visiting faculty member during 2013-14, then was hired as an Associate Professor in Fall 2014. He recently completed his second year on the faculty where he taught courses ranging from the first-year Introduction to Engineering Design, to Dynamics, to Medical Device Design. Prior to joining GVSU, Dr. Nowak was an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio where he was the founding faculty of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems. Prior to that, he was in leadership roles at Southwest Research Institute and a lead engineer at NASA – Johnson Space Center. Prof. Nowak has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Huihui Qi
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering

Dr. Qi joined the faculty at GVSU as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2014. She recently completed her first year where she taught the first-year Introduction to Engineering Design course and advised co-op students. Prof. Qi has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Rutgers University where her research developed a multi-criteria decision making tool in life cycle assessment for sustainable design with uncertainty analysis.

New Affiliate Faculty:

Karl Brakora
Affiliate Faculty, Electrical Engineering

Dr. Brakora joined the faculty at GVSU as an Affiliate Faculty member in Fall 2014. He recently completed his first year where he taught the first-year Introduction to Engineering Design course, Introduction to Digital Systems and advised co-op students. Prior to joining GVSU, Dr. Brakora was the Lead RF/Microwave Engineer at EMAG Technologies. Prof. Brakora has a PhD in Applied Electromagnetics from the University of Michigan where his research focused on the design of 3-D monolithic MMW components using ceramic stereolithography.

Taylor Irwin
Affiliate Faculty, Mechanical Engineering

Prof. Irwin will join the faculty of the School of Engineering at GVSU this fall as an Affiliate Faculty member. Most recently she has been a Supplier Quality Engineer and Senior Design Engineer for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company. She also has been an Adjunct Faculty member this summer for GVSU teaching Introduction to Thermo-Fluid Systems. Prof. Irwin earned her MS in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign where she researched 3D microvascular fluidic networks for self-healing biomaterials.

Nabeeh Kandalaft
Affiliate Faculty, Electrical Engineering

Dr. Kandalaft will join the faculty at GVSU as an Affiliate Faculty member this fall. Most recently he has been an Instructor at the University of Windsor where he taught low power CMOS design. Prior to his work at the University of Windsor, he was a Senior Project Manager at Alpha Films and Printing Technologies and a Senior Engineer at Murad Technical and Trading East. Prof. Kandalaft has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Windsor where his research focused on developing a high speed test interface module using MEMS technology.

Diane LaFreniere
Affiliate Faculty, Electrical Engineering

Prof. LaFreniere joined the faculty at GVSU as an Affiliate Faculty member in Fall 2014. She recently completed her first year where he taught the first-year Introduction to Engineering Design course, Circuit Analysis I, Co-op Prep and advised co-op students. Prior to joining GVSU, Prof. LaFreniere was the Operations Manager and Electrical Engineer for Bay Machinery Company and an Electrical Engineering Technology Instructor at the University of Toledo. Prof. LaFreniere has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University.

Negin Nadvar
Affiliate Faculty, Electrical Engineering

Prof. Nadvar joined the faculty at GVSU as an Affiliate Faculty member in Fall 2014. She recently completed her first year where he taught the first-year Introduction to Engineering Design course, Circuit Analysis I and advised co-op students. Prior to joining GVSU, Prof. Nadvar worked as a Design Engineer for Stryker Instruments. Prof. Nadvar has a MSE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from GVSU.

School of Engineering Staff Changes:

Hugh Jack

Dr. Jack, Professor in the School of Engineering, will be leaving GVSU this fall to take on a new challenge as the inaugural Cass Ballenger Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Western Carolina University. He also will serve as head of the Department of Engineering and Technology at WCU. A member of the Product Design and Manufacturing (PDM ) Engineering faculty at GVSU since 1996, Dr. Jack was instrumental in developing the PDM major, as well as being involved at various times with other programs such as the senior capstone design course and the graduate program within the School of Engineering. We wish Dr. Jack the best in this new opportunity and are proud to have had him as a member of the School of Engineering faculty for the past 19 years. Read about Dr. Jack’s new appointment: http://news-prod.wcu.edu/2015/06/wcu-names-hugh-jack-as-first-cass-ballenger-professor-of-engineering/

Chris Plouff

Dr. Plouff, Associate Professor in the School of Engineering, will be transitioning in January 2016 to the Provost’s Office at GVSU as an Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs – Assessment, Accreditation and Planning.  He has served for the past seven years as the James R. Sebastian Chair of Engineering Cooperative Education and Education Development, leading the School’s co-op program and overseeing assessment and accreditation processes. He also has been serving as the Interim Director of the School of Engineering for the past year. In his new role, he will continue to work with assessment, accreditation and planning at the university-level. A search is currently underway for his replacement as the Sebastian Chair (please see current Job Openings at gvsu.edu/hro/)

Wael Mokhtar

Dr. Mokhtar, Associate Professor in the School of Engineering, is currently serving as the Assistant Director of the School. Dr. Mokhtar joined GVSU in 2009 where he has taught courses and served in various roles within the Mechanical Engineering program. In his role as Assistant Director he assists with School operations, including coordination of course scheduling, curriculum development and advancement, and web site development.

If you are receiving this email, you already have a relationship of some sort with Grand Valley State University or the Padnos College of Engineering and Computing. Whether you are a current student, alum, faculty, staff, corporate partner, or other affiliate, you have expressed an interest in our programs and what we have to offer. We want to keep you interested by sharing captivating and industry relevant stories that stem from the continuous accomplishments of our College constituents. If you would prefer for us to reach you at another address, please update your contact information. If you would like to share your accomplishments with us, please update your career information. We would love to hear from you!

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