CoE News

Dela Houssou: “We need resilient infrastructure more than ever, and AI can help us create it”
Houssou, senior in civil engineering, is conducting research with associate professor Alice Alipour on how to make Iowa’s power infrastructure more resilient to climate change. Due to climate change, natural disasters are becoming more common and severe. Following suit, infrastructure all around Iowa needs to be able to account for more of these dangerous and frequent storms. Read More

March 17, 2023
The Conversation: Joe Charbonnet on the new PFAS water quality guidelines
Cyclone Engineer and water quality expert Joe Charbonnet explains technology and the investment needed to get forever chemicals out of US drinking water in The Conversation. Read More

March 16, 2023
Rural agriculture needs reliable communication: Josh Peschel launches new technology in ag hotspots
Josh Peschel, assistant professor in agricultural and biosystems engineering, is linking agriculture and technology together in a nationwide research project funded by the National Science Foundation. The team, led by Hongwei Zhang, a professor in electrical and computer engineering, is launching a test bed for experimentation to develop new, wireless networking tools that would serve remote areas - especially ones here in Iowa. Read More

March 6, 2023
Samantha Guido is building a one-of-a-kind engineering career piece by piece
When she was a kid, Samantha Guido’s big sister told her that engineering was like building with LEGO: a way to make new things from scratch. Read More

March 1, 2023
Bridging the gaps for graduate students
Started in 2019, Graduates for Advancing Professional Skills (GAPS) is an opportunity for graduate students to close the gap between academic research skills and what their future employer expects. It was born from Jiang’s desire to better equip students with real-world soft skills. Read More

February 27, 2023
Iowa State University College of Engineering launches new biomedical engineering degree
Iowa State University’s College of Engineering is introducing a bachelor of science degree program in biomedical engineering. The biomedical engineering program will be a hands-on educational experience in understanding, designing and manufacturing innovations to improve health. Majoring in biomedical engineering can also prepare students for medical school or other advanced studies. Read More

February 22, 2023
Restore what once was: Flora Kafunda engineers ways to restore ecosystems faster
“After what has been done, there are a lot of ecosystems that we can’t get back naturally - so what are our alternatives? What can we engineer to replace the missing parts of an ecosystem that it really needs to thrive?” Read More

February 13, 2023
Researchers team up to break down, upcycle low-quality, rejected plastic wastes
Iowa State's Xianglan Bai is leading two, $2-million-plus projects that will study and develop new ways to break down waste plastics and convert them to useful materials. The U.S. Department of Energy is supporting both projects. Read More

February 9, 2023
Sound seeing: Sam Das pairs audio sensing with artificial intelligence to monitor International Space Station
As an artificial intelligence research leader at Bosch, Samarjit Das (‘10 Ph.D. electrical engineering) has partnered with NASA to develop deep audio analytics technologies that monitor the health of machines in space. And back here on earth, he’s using audio sensing with AI to improve disease diagnosis. Read More

February 6, 2023
Katherine Gisi: A spark for engineering better brain imaging
Katherine Gisi, senior in electrical engineering, wants us all to be able to understand an important, complex electrical system: the human brain. Read More

February 3, 2023
Student organization’s “concrete hearts” spread Valentine’s Day cheer this February
The Concrete Canoe Club in the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering is beginning their third year of Valentine’s Day cheer as they build and sell their very own creation: concrete hearts. Read More

February 1, 2023
If walls could talk: Cyclone Engineers develop cyber-physical system for exterior walls to “think for themselves”
Associate professor Alice Alipour (CCEE), associate professor Behrouz Shafei (CCEE) and professor Partha Sarkar (aerospace engineering) received a grant from the NSF in 2018 to study what they call a Smorphacade (short for a Smart Morphing Façade), a type of building exterior that is what some could consider alive. Recently, they received another project from NSF to conduct technology transfer on this fundamentally transformative idea. Read More

January 31, 2023
Holographic hard hats ahead: Cyclone Engineers break into the third dimension of structural design
Civil engineering sophomore Liam Lenahan and assistant professor Roy Sturgill are working together to bring the third dimension into structural design. The two are bringing 3D projects into the classroom through a very ‘construction-style’ medium: hard hats. Read More

January 26, 2023
ISU Power Pullers: Pushing the edge of innovation
What drives the members of ISU Power Pullers Club Read More

January 23, 2023
Thoughts turning, wheels rolling: Hory Chikez and students design and build mobile assembly lab
Ping! was the sound of Hory Chikez’s thoughts when the spark of an idea was ignited one September afternoon. Read More

January 9, 2023