Vantsevich Appointed Chair of TC Transportation Machinery Committee
Vladimir Vantsevich, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, was recently appointed chair of the Technical Committee for Transportation Machinery in the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science (IFToMM).
The IFToMM is an organization that supports the international exchange of researchers and engineers from disciplines related to mechanical engineering.
In his role as chair, Vantsevich will enact initiatives designed to reinforce actions by the Technical Committee regarding more individual participation. In addition, he will be conducting a technical seminar and a meeting of the committee in Milan, Italy.
That meeting will be held in conjunction with the annual meeting of a collaborative project for NATO, in which Vantsevich is working with international partners to develop a mechatronic physical system that will sense information related to tire mobility in a four-wheel-drive tactical military vehicle.
Vantsevich and UAB Ph.D. student Sam Misko are collaborating with researchers at Virginia Tech, in Ukraine, and at Coventry University in the United Kingdom.
Engineering Council of Birmingham Honors CCEE Faculty Member as Educator of the Year
Virginia Sisiopiku, Ph.D., was selected by the Engineering Council of Birmingham (ECOB) as the 2017 Educator of the Year. The award was presented at the 59th Annual Awards Banquet on February 20, 2018. Sisiopiku is the first UAB engineering faculty member to receive the ECOB Educator of the Year Award.
Ten UAB engineering students were also honored at the event, including UAB Graduate Student of the Year Grant Alexander and UAB Undergraduate Student of the Year Emma Latham.
Sisiopiku is an Associate Professor in Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and has been a UAB faculty member since 2002. She is a broadly trained transportation engineer with more than 25 years of professional experience in intelligent transportation systems and traffic operations & safety. She serves as the director of the Transportation Engineering Program at UAB and is the founding director of the UAB Transportation Engineering and Development Laboratory (TREND Lab).
The Mix: Force for Good
BME Senior Contributes to Cancer-Fighting Research
Retta El-Sayed, a senior BME student, has worked in a variety of roles on a team that seeks to improve imaging capabilities for cancer research.Many aspiring scientists wonder how they’ll find the right lab to launch their research career. Retta El-Sayed was pulled right in by a giant magnet.
For the past two years, El-Sayed, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering, has worked in the UAB Cyclotron Facility, studying exotic radioactive isotopes with the facility’s team of radiochemists. [Learn more about the high-speed world of cyclotron research in this Mix feature.]
It all began when El-Sayed was a sophomore. A friend in medical school invited her along on a tour of UAB’s cyclotron, a 60-ton behemoth used to create the radioactive particles needed for PET imaging. “I wasn’t expecting anything,” she says, but during the tour she got excited about the cyclotron and its potential for creating new types of imaging for cancer research: “I think it’s one of the coolest pieces of research equipment at UAB.”
She emailed Suzanne Lapi, Ph.D., director of the cyclotron facility, to ask about volunteering in Lapi’s lab. “She ended up hiring me,” El-Sayed says. “It was really cool.” El-Sayed has worked with doctoral student Stacy Queern to produce Zirconium–89, an isotope that can be used to study the effects of the drug trastuzumab on breast tumors. She helps Tolulope Aweda, Ph.D., label antibodies with radioactive isotopes such as Copper–64 and Gallium–68, and assists Adrianna Massicano, Ph.D., in electroplating copper coins with chromium, a crucial step in producing manganese–52.
Discover Engineering
An Open Lab Event
Come discover what the UAB School of Engineering has to offer! On February 19, the school will open Engineers Week 2018 with Discover Engineering: An Open Lab Event. For two hours, students and faculty from all five engineering departments will be on for demonstrations of lab equipment and answer questions about engineering education and potential careers.
The event will include a free continental breakfast at 9:30 a.m., with lab tours and demonstrations running from 10 a.m. until noon.
All ages are welcome, and there is no cost for the event.
For more information, contact Bethany Floyd at bcfloyd@uab.edu, or click the button below to register.
