Arkansas Engineer

The magazine of the University of Arkansas College of Engineering

During the first week of December, 66 computer engineering and computer science students volunteered at elementary schools, teaching kids the basics of writing computer code. Happy Hollow Elementary School, Butterfield Trail Elementary School, and Vandergriff Elementary School participated in the Hour of Code program as part of Computer Science Education Week. Code.org, a national organization that promotes computer science, sponsors this program.

Three biological and agricultural engineering graduate students, Zach Callaway, Sardar Abdullah and Lizhou Xu, won three of six awards in the research paper competition during the Arkansas Association of Food Protection annual meeting in September.

Civil engineering students Braden Davidson and Matthew Watters placed third in the Mortar Workability Competition at the American Concrete Institute fall convention in Washington, DC.
Richard Deschenes Jr. presented his poster on pavement Alkali-Silica reactions in Arkansas at the 2014 Mack-Blackwell Advisory Board Meeting and received the 2014 Jack Buffington Outstanding Student Poster Award.

Civil engineering student Ryan DuChanois was awarded a $50,000 fellowship for undergraduate research through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greater Research Opportunities Undergraduate Student Fellowship program.

Jeremy Dunklin, a graduate student in chemical engineering, and Gregory Forcherio, a graduate student in microelectronics-photonics, received 2014 travel scholarships from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. Their research adviser is D. Keith Roper, associate professor of chemical engineering and holder of the Charles W. Oxford Endowed Professorship in Emerging Technologies.

Electrical engineering students John George and Kristopher “Cody” Johnson each received the Power and Energy Society Scholarship from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Recent biomedical engineering graduate Gage Greening developed a new, non-invasive tool for early diagnosis of oral cancer in his honors thesis. Greening is now a graduate student at the U of A, and recently published part of his honors undergraduate research in the Journal of Biomedical Optics, one of the top journals in his field.

Anna Irwin, a junior majoring in computer science, recently spent 21 hours helping to create an Android app as part of the Google Hackathon. The hackathon, which was organized through the Society of Women in Engineering conference, brought together around 50 computer science students to show off their creativity and programming skills.

Industrial engineering doctoral students Emre Kirac and Mahboubeh Madadi received second place in the Interactive Sessions Competition at the annual conference of the Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences. Doctoral student Mina Hadianniasar was selected as a finalist in the Case and Teaching Material Competition.

Russell Locetta, a junior Honors College student majoring in mechanical engineering, was recently selected to be a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Petroleum Division Collegiate Council. Locetta was one of 26 students selected from universities in North America. This is the first time a mechanical engineering student from the University of Arkansas has been a member of the council.

Stephanie Maxwell, a senior majoring in civil engineering, and Andrew Stephens, a sophomore majoring in biological and agricultural engineering, were recently awarded the Beaver Water District Joe Steele and Hardy Croxton Memorial Scholarship.

Industrial engineering doctoral students Furkan Oztanriseven and co-author Mehmet Serdar Kilinc received second place in the student paper competition at the annual conference of the American Society for Engineering Management.

Philip Turner, chemical engineering graduate student, received first place in the graduate student poster competition at the 2014 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education. Civil engineering graduate student German Perez received second place.

Kaylee Smith, an undergraduate in chemical engineering, was awarded a Statewide Undergraduate Research Fellowship grant. She also won third place in her division at the poster session at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers meeting in November.

Five seniors from the Department of Civil Engineering received engineering scholarships from the Arkansas Good Roads Transportation Council.