Jillian Woolridge, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics and an advisee of Dr. S. Ashok, Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics will travel in December to Kanpur, India and attend the 16th International Workshop on Physics of Semiconductor Devices. While attending the conference, Jillian will present a paper on her work under the photovoltaics category which summarizes her work to date on the effects of various laser processing parameters on selective emitters for use in photovoltaic application and commercialization.

Madineh Sedigh-Sarvestani, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics and member of the Center for Neural Engineering, traveled in November to Washington, DC to attend the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. While at the meeting she presented a poster entitled “Likelihood of sleep-wake states before seizure onset in rodent.” The Society of Neuroscience annual meeting is the largest gathering of the neuroscience community, hosting up to 34,000 researchers each year.

On October 1, 2011, Jay Patten, gradaute student council president, led a group of outgoing ESM graduate students, Asheesh Lanba, Brian Reinhardt, Brian Kiraly, and Steve Koytek, up Mount Monadnock located Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Mount Monadnock is 3,165 ft in elevation and known as the most hiked mountain in the United States. Having grew up near Mount Monadnock, Jay Patten was eager to reveal what southwestern New Hampshire has to offer to his friends. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't to their advantage but regardless of the rain and fog they still had a great weekend. The group plans to return to New Hampshire to hike the Presidential Range located in the White Mountains during the summer of 2012.

Daniel Ahmed, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics, was selected to receive a Young Investigator Best Poster Award at the 15th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences. Daniel was one of the three winners selected from more than six hundred posters at the conference. Daniel is a member of Professor Tony Huang’s research group. Congratulations Daniel!

Drew Pulsifer, gradaute student in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will travel to Nashville, TN in late October to present a paper at the semi-annual meeting of the American Vacuum Society. His paper is entitled "Optimal Conditions for Visualization of Fingerprints with the Conformal-Evaporated-Film-By-Rotation Technique." To learn more about the meeting, please visit their web site.

Zakaria Al Balushi, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechancis, will attend the Materials Research Society Workshop on Directed Self-Assembly of Materials September 28 at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN. This workshop will review the current state of the art in the directed self-assembly of materials, and then seek the identify breakthrough strategies and enabling technologies (both theoretical and experimental) that will facilitate the design and massive self-assembly of multi-component 3D structures with precisely engineered electronics and optical properties. To learn more about the conference, please visit their web site.

Kamrun Kamrunnahar, graduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics, will present a paper entitled “A square root ensemble Kalman filter application to a moto-imagery brain-computer interface,” at the 33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC). The conference will be held in Boston, MA from August 30 through September 3. This conference is an annual event that brings together the researchers from all over the world in quantitative fields with a view to medicine and biological applications. To learn more about the conference please visit their web site.

Muhammad Faryad, Graduate Student in Engineering Science and Mecahnics, will travel to San Diego, California in August 2011 to present a paper at the SPIE Optics and Photonics 2011 Symposium. Muhammad is advised by Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Charles Godfrey Binder Professor in Engineering Science and Mechanics. To learn more about the meeting, please visit their web site.

While many people can’t think far enough ahead to plan tonight’s dinner, Adebayo Adejare, a sophomore in engineering science and mechanics, is planning a better future for his grandchildren.

The Albrightsville, Pa., native’s efforts in sustainability helped secure him a spot as one of 20 students selected from across the country as one of the nation’s top rising young leaders in the clean energy sector who will participate in Focus the Nation’s Recharge! Retreat August 21-26 on Oregon’s Mt. Hood.

To apply, candidates write an essay explaining their passion, dedication and unique contributions to increasing clean energy in America. Focus the Nation, a national nonprofit that supports rising leaders in launching careers that accelerate the transition to clean energy, then selects and funds the leaders—five each in the categories of Technician, Innovator, Politico, and Storyteller—to attend the retreat. Adejare will join the other four Innovators, represented by students drawn to careers as engineers, scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs who discover and demonstrate the power of clean energy solutions.

He remembers the phone call he received earlier this month, letting him know he would be heading to Oregon. “I was just outside my hometown when I got the call. I applied in May, but I wasn’t really sure I had a chance, since my only credential was being an Eco-Rep on campus last year. I probably didn’t sound too excited, but I was.”
The retreat, designed to encourage today’s young energy leaders to collaborate on clean ideas and meet today's crop of community energy ambassadors, includes activities such as: hiking Elliot Glacier, which has experienced 60 percent snowpack loss since 1982; touring the Boardman Coal Plant, scheduled to close by 2020; and visiting Biglow Canyon Wind Farm, which powers 125,000 homes in Oregon. Adejare says he most looks forward to hiking Elliot Glacier because he’s never seen one before.

As an Eco-Rep in East Halls last year, Adejare promoted sustainable behavior by showing fellow students environmentally friendlier ways of doing everyday things. He explains, “For instance, we ask students to dine in instead of dining out, which reduces packaging.”

Adejare ties his passion for sustainability to his choice of major, “Engineering science and mechanics provides a well-rounded education, since students get a little bit of experience in all the different sciences. This helps a great deal because my focus is unique – I want to work with solar panel technology, increase solar panel efficiency, and make the panels more mainstream with better designs. I’d also like to try to make solar panels out of less conventional materials like plastic.”

He says he hopes to bring back new ideas from his Recharge! Retreat experience and share them with the Eco-Reps, perhaps branching the group out to include community members.

Adejare adds, “Sustainability really is about the future. It’s about making a world we’d love to live in. The actions we do now have a large impact. To have a cleaner tomorrow we have to make the right choices by conserving resources today. It’s not just for you, it’s for your family, your kids, and grandkids.”
**Source: Penn State Live

Abigail Dodson, undergraduate student in Engineering Science and Mechanics and Schreyer scholar, received a Tau Beta Pi scholarship this spring. Tau Beta Pi scholarships are awarded on the competitive criteria of high scholarship, campus leadership and service and promise of future contributions to the engineering profession. All scholars are members of Tau Beta Pi. ESM congratulates Abigail!