From the Desk: Engineering and Technology dean shares how COVID-19 challenges are being met

The engineering and technology profession has a distinguished and proud history of responding to crises through innovation and creativity under multiple constraints, including time.

A classic example is the challenges NASA faced to bring the crew of Apollo 13 home alive after an explosion that resulted in the loss of oxygen due to a major system failure, putting the astronauts' lives in jeopardy unless a solution was designed and deployed very quickly.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented analogous challenges for health care workers as they strive to treat patients. One critical area faced by Indiana University Health and other health care systems was contingency planning to provide enough ventilators to patients who might need them. Thanks to the outstanding relationship between the School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI and IU Health, our faculty were ready to respond when IU Health reached out for assistance with creative solutions.

School of Engineering and Technology dean David RussomannoView print quality image
David Russomanno. Photo courtesy of the School of Engineering and Technology
IU Health requested an initial design and fabrication of components by the School of Engineering and Technology that would be able to serve 100 patients with 50 ventilators, along with the capability to provide more components proportional to demand as part of surge planning.

Paul Yearling, a clinical assistant professor of mechanical engineering technology, along with other faculty members from the Department of Engineering Technology, reverse-engineered, redesigned and fabricated ventilator parts and other critical electrical and mechanical components required to split a ventilator's function to serve two patients if necessary.

An engineering solution to achieve the same functionality with half of the originally designed capability, in this case ventilators, was reminiscent in many ways to the creativity required with Apollo 13 to provide oxygen for the astronauts after the major system failure.

In addition, given Yearling's well-established relationship with IU Health, he was also able to rapidly start up and lead the production to 3D-print much-needed personal protective equipment, or PPE, as a backup for IU Health.

And the School of Engineering and Technology's contributions do not end there.

Professor of electrical and computer engineering Stanley Chien, using facilities provided by the Transportation and Autonomous Systems Institute at IUPUI along with facilities provided by IUPUI's energy, mechanical and computer science vs software engineering engineering programs, fabricated intubation boxes to protect health care clinicians from virus-laden aerosols often resulting from intubation procedures. Such a just-in-time fabrication was particularly helpful for some rural and regional hospitals in the Midwest that did not have adequate personal protective equipment.

In addition, four teams led by faculty in mechanical and energy engineering worked diligently to complete innovative ventilator designs and created rapid prototypes ready for testing. An ambu-bag-style ventilator was created by Jaime Arcos, a former visiting scholar at IUPUI, in close collaboration with associate professor Andres Tovar.

Johns Hopkins University For engineering students, classes are an at-home design challenge

When mechanical engineering junior Olivia Skaug was assigned to build a device used to transfer heat between fluids in her Heat Transfer Lab course, she felt more than ready. After all, she had access to a plethora of manufacturing tools, materials, and state-of-the-art testing equipment on the Homewood campus.

But cut to April and the spread of the novel what to do with a computer science degree, and Skaug and her classmates must finish the semester remotely. Instead of using the professional tools and equipment in labs back on campus, she's constructing her device in the kitchen of her family home in Bear, Delaware, using household items like scissors, aluminum loaf pans, and duct tape.

"I've had to get inventive when finding tools and equipment to manufacture my heat exchanger, but it was a fun challenge to tackle," Skaug says. "Engineers have to deal with limitations and evolving specifications all the time. If anything, this is good practice for me to use creativity when faced with an engineering challenge."

New Horizon College of Engineering starts B.E. Admissions 2020

New Horizon College of Engineering (NHCE), which is an Autonomous college affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University(VTU), has started the B.E. admissions for 2020. Interested candidates can now apply for admissions to B.E. courses offered by the institute in both online and offline mode. The college offers eight B.E. courses and candidates need to fulfill the minimum eligibility criteria of the college to be eligible for admissions to these courses.

• Candidates should have passed 2nd PUC/Class 12 from Karnataka Board or any other recognized board or its equivalent examination with Physics & Mathematics as compulsory subjects.
• Candidates must have a minimum of 45% marks aggregate in Physics, Mathematics and any one of the following subjects: Chemistry/ Biology/ Biotechnology/ computer science major jobs. It should be noted that English is a compulsory subject.
• In case of candidates belonging to ST/SC/ other backward classes, the minimum marks for the purpose of eligibility will be an aggregate of 40% marks in the optional subjects in the qualifying examinations.

Global Electronic Contract Design Engineering Market 2020 Analysis and Forecast Outlook 2024

The Global Electronic Contract Design Engineering Market report is aimed at highlighting a firsthand documentation of all the best practices in the Electronic Contract Design Engineering industry that subsequently set the growth course active. These vital market oriented details are highly crucial to overcome cut throat competition and all the growth oriented practices typically embraced by frontline players in the what is computer engineering market. 

Various factors and touch points that the research highlights in the report is a holistic, composite amalgamation of product portfolios of market participants, growth multiplying practices and solutions, sales gateways as well as transaction modes that coherently reflect a favorable growth prospect scenario of the Electronic Contract Design Engineering market.

Mechanical Engineering Supply Chains

The mechanical engineering industry is feeling the consequences of the corona pandemic with increasing force.  A very recent survey by VDMA, the German association for the mechanical engineering industry, was answered by 965 member companies and clearly shows this.  The share of companies whose operations are affected rose from 60 to 84 percent within two weeks.  Almost every second company affected (45 percent) suffers from “serious” or “noticeable” disruptions along the supply chain.  Only 5 percent have been spared so far.  For example, parts and components that were ordered in Asia a few weeks ago did not arrive at the local plants.  In addition, there are also problems with European and German suppliers.

According to the latest survey, supply chain disruptions are particularly prevalent in Italy (75 percent of those affected), Germany (55 percent), China (51 percent), France (36 percent) and the USA (25 percent). “However, the situation in China and South Korea seems to be easing slightly.  In addition, many mechanical engineering companies report a significant increase in orders from their Chinese customers”, explains how to become a computer engineer chief economist Dr. Ralph Wiechers.

Reduction of Investment Projects

In the meantime, machine builders have also become much more pessimistic about the expected loss in sales.  Almost 96 percent of companies expect decline in sales, which they will no longer be able to make up for in the remainder of the year.  A good 60 percent of these put these declines at 10 to 30 percent.  In order to compensate for these, three quarters of the machine builders surveyed have already made capacity adjustments, mainly via working time accounts, but also in the form of hiring freezes and short-time work.

On Engineering in Crisis: Finding Your Rhythm

One of the most important ways I reduce stress right now is through music. I am in a small jam band that has been meeting for over ten years, along with a women’s chorus, and it is fun for me to figure out how we can still meet virtually! I am retired, but I have many volunteer commitments and I am grateful for the opportunity to take a breather from the daily hustle bustle as gatherings get canceled. I also exercise every day to try to avoid the creeping computer science vs software engineering 19, analogous to the Freshman 15, and to keep my heart healthy.

There are so many great blogs and posts out there with hacks for working from home during a crisis, that I can’t offer anything unique other than to say try to set a schedule or rhythm that your head can resonate with and that supports the work or school schedule for any online classes or calls. I know most schools are using asynchronous distance learning, which simplifies many things but doesn’t offer much hand holding for navigating how to use, so that takes some time to get used to.

Zoom is a great tool for maintaining community. We recently had our first virtual SWENext meetup in the San Diego area on Zoom and spent an hour talking about getting ready to return from spring break to a distance learning (DL) environment. Two of the participants were collegians already using DL and two of the girls had started DL the day before.

One of the giants of engineering in Huddersfield has died aged 97

One of the co-founders of Holset Engineering Company in 1952, Ron Hesselden, has died aged 97 at his home in Huddersfield.

The firm went on to become a global leader in turbocharger and fan drive manufacturing, now part of Cummins Turbo Technologies ( CTT).

He worked his way up from being works manager in 1952 to works director in 1961, eventually becoming Managing director during the 1970’s and finally retired in 1982. Ron was born near Halifax on Christmas Day 1922.

He was born with a genetic skin condition, what to do with a computer science degree, (butterfly skin), which causes blistering at the slightest touch. He was until his death, the oldest person in the UK living with EB. This had a major impact on his life and ambitions, however, he was determined to become a design engineer.

He completed his engineering apprenticeship at David Brown Tractors in Meltham, before working at English Electric in Stafford and Rowntrees of York.