SOE Outreach Effort to Expand to Five Area Libraries
An important outreach effort by the School of Engineering continues to grow, thanks to a big grant awarded to the Birmingham Public Library (BPL).
BPL recently received a $95,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. The funds will be used to expand Teens Engineer Birmingham, a pilot afterschool program that pairs engineering faculty and students with teens. The program is currently held at three city libraries – Central, Southside and Woodlawn, but BPL will use the grant money to expand the program to five libraries over the next two years.
The Community Foundation announced the grant and other recipients on May 26.
Teens Engineer Birmingham began at the Central Library in 2015. Last year, it was expanded to Southside and Woodlawn branch libraries after BPL won a $50,000 Community Impact Grant from the UAB Benevolent Fund.
Mentors from the UAB School of Engineering, led by Outreach Director Abidin Yildirim, Ph.D., provide weekly STEM-based robotics programming students who come from home schools as well as nearby schools such as Phillips Academy, Woodlawn and Ramsay high schools.
The $95,000 grant from the Community Foundation will be used to buy laptops, software, tools, safety equipment, and to fund stipends for the UAB engineering students mentoring the teens at the five libraries across the city.
“This expansion will mean more opportunities for teenagers to get involved in STEM, but it is also a great opportunity for UAB faculty and students to give back to the Birmingham community,” said Yildirim. “Outreach programs such as this one are vitally important to make sure young people are exposed to the opportunities that are available to them in STEM fields, such as engineering.”
BME Undergrads Receive Presidential Fellowships
Recipients of the UAB Presidential Innovation Summer Fellowship program were recognized for their commitment to clinical innovation by UAB President Ray L. Watts at a May reception.Four UAB biomedical engineering undergraduates—Brody DeSilva, Allaire Doussan, Ali El-Husari, and Paige Severino—are among the five recipients of the first UAB Presidential Innovation Summer Fellowship program.
The students, all members of the Science and Technology Honors Program in the UAB Honors College, will continue their work this summer in a unique program that pairs undergraduates with working nurses and clinicians to work toward translating ideas into improved patient care and outcomes.
The program, UAB’s Solution Studios™, is a partnership among the Honors College Science and Technology Honors Program, UAB Medicine and the UAB schools of Engineering and Nursing. The purpose of the program is to accelerate the translation of clinical innovation by training clinicians and STEM students — those studying science, technology, engineering and math — to collaborate and think creatively around solutions to clinical problems.
Nurses and clinicians have chosen to devote their lives to patient care, during which they sometimes come across processes or products that could be improved. While they have little time to give to moving a solution to the problem forward, their experience with patients on a daily basis makes them adept at identifying opportunities for improvement.
That is where the teams of innovators come in. The fellowship program will allow the students to continue the work they started in UAB Solution Studios™.
Prioritizing Safety
ASEM Director Discusses Electric-Shock Drowning and How to Keep Swimmers Safe
A danger that you can’t see or hear — electric shock in water — can easily go undetected. Electricity is deadly and often discovered only after it is too late.
When alternating current of electricity is running through freshwater bodies, such as pools and lakes, there is risk that a person could succumb to electric shock drowning.
Donald Burke, Ph.D., director of Advanced Safety and Engineering Management, a concentration in the School of Engineering's Master of Engineering Program, explains.
“Electric shock drowning can occur in any fresh body of water, and anywhere you may have an electrical device that has faulty or damaged wiring, and equipment can cause the body of water to become energized,” Burke said. “Then, when the human body comes into contact with that energized body of water, it overwhelms our body’s natural electrical signals that control our muscles.”
According to Burke, depending on the current level, a person could experience anything from tingling all the way to paralysis and cardiac arrest — potentially causing electric shock drowning and, if the level is high enough, electrocution.
Following some simple steps when adding electricity to a structure that is near a body of fresh water, and remaining vigilant in testing it, is a key to preventing the possibility of electric shock drowning.
Going the Distance
Blazer Motorsports Launches Crowdfunding Effort to Send Baja Team to National Competition
This archive photo shows the 2010 Baja team assembling their car. Increased funding would allow teams to improve design concepts from one year to the next. This Memorial Day weekend, Blazer Motorsports is taking a student-designed Baja SAE car to a competition where it hopes it can contend against the nation's best. To get there, the team is launching a crowdfunding campaign that it hopes will not only provide funds for this year's event, but will help turn UAB's Baja team into a perrenial power.
Over the past two years, this interdisciplinary team, which includes students from all five engineering departments as well as from other schools across campus, has been working on an improved Baja car to compete in Pittsburg, Kansas. Travel expenses for car and team are expected to be around $10,000.
“At UAB, we have everything we need to have a championship Baja team,” said Steve Thompson, mentor for the 2017 team. “We finished third as recently as 2011, so we know we can contend with other schools in our region, but we’ve never had the continuity we need from one year to the next.”
