College of Engineering News

Everyone has their own ways of unwinding after a stressful day. Mechanical engineering student Josh Jarnagin unwinds by hopping on his skateboard and hitting the skatepark.

Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering professor Eric Cochran has been officially recognized as Mary Jane Skogen Hagenson & Randy L. Hagenson Professor in a medallion ceremony on the Iowa State University campus.

Five Cyclone Engineers will receive College of Engineering alumni awards at the ISUAA Honors and Awards Ceremony on Oct. 22 during Homecoming week. 

October is cybersecurity awareness month and the Center for Cybersecurity Innovation and Outreach (CyIO) hosted its first fair last week. Faculty, staff and students saw how important cybersecurity is and how easily information can be exploited.

Studying outside is a common scene on the Iowa State University campus during the warmer months, and that ability to study outside became even easier because of an effort by a mechanical engineering student.

When most of us think “recycling,” we don’t also immediately think “music.” But innovative students at Iowa State are collaborating across disciplines to find the perfect harmony between materials science, reducing waste, and creating new musical instruments. In the Recyclables Evolved from Offscouring Remade to Music (REFORM) project, students from areas in engineering, particularly materials science and engineering, are working together with student in music and theatre to reduce plastic waste at Iowa State by gathering plastic materials and transforming them into durable plastic musical instruments.

Iowa State University Teaching Professor Alan Constant officiated the wedding of high school sweethearts Jonathan Zaugg and Sara Medina. Zaugg is a graduate student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, where Constant teaches.

A diverse team of 18 scientists led by D. Raj Raman, Morrill Professor of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at Iowa State, received a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to study the potential environmental benefits afforded by perennial grasses, which grow every year without having to be planted or harvested, between rows of cash crops.

Skroot Laboratory, Inc., a startup business founded and led by Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering associate professor and Jack R. and Carol A. Johnson Faculty Fellow Nigel Reuel, took first place in the 2021 John Pappajohn Iowa Entrepreneurial Venture Competition.

The Center for Bioplastics and Biocomposites (CB2), co-located at Iowa State University’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (CBE), has been awarded Phase II of a National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers Program grant.

Three-time Iowa State University alum Denis Bbosa has been named the deputy dean of the Faculty of Applied Sciences and Technology at Mbarara University in Uganda, which is the approximate equivalent of the College of Engineering at Iowa State University.

A team of interdisciplinary researchers at Iowa State University will study ways that they can utilize digital teaching technologies to effectively develop a robust workforce that will serve Iowa’s rural communities.

Justin Lajoie, a mechanical engineering graduate student working with Travis Sipple in multiphase flows, has received the Department of Defense, Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship. The scholarship fully funds his education and allows him to focus on his research.

ABE’s Students of Color Network emphasizes acceptance and inclusion of people of color, and the group has flourished into a supportive community.

The Iowa State University Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering welcomes several new faculty and staff to the department for the 2021-22 school year.