Andrew Geronimo, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics and member of the Center for Neural Engineering, received the National Science Foundation IEEE EMBS Excellence in Neural Engineering Travel Award. With this award, Andrew plans to attend the 5th International IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Conference in August 2011. To learn more about the conference, please visit their web site. Congratulations Andrew!

The Society of Engineering Sciences students placed second in the Rube Goldberg Competition, Saturday February 26. The machine was based on the robot Wall-E and its function was to water a plant in twenty or more steps.

The Rube Goldberg Machine Contest brings the ideas of Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Rube Goldberg's "invention" cartoons to life. This Olympics of Complexity is designed to pull students away from conventional problem-solving and push them into the endless chaos of imagination and intuitive thought. To be specific, groups are given an elementary challenge: something as simple as peeling an apple, sharpening a pencil, or putting toothpaste on a toothbrush. But instead of just "solving" the problem, students have to make the solution as complicated and as convoluted as possible. In fact, the more steps the better the Rube Goldberg Machine. An assemblage of ordinary objects, mechanical gadgets, and the oddest odds and ends are linked together and somehow get to the desired goal.