On Sunday, April 22, 2012, engineering undergraduate students demoed an airplane water impact study for the Discovery Channel at the War Memorial swimming pool. The ongoing study will be featured on an episode of “Daily Planet,” which airs internationally and is available online in the United States.
Virginia Tech’s Student Engineers’ Council held its annual Leadership Luncheon Wednesday, April 25. Honored were Preston Durrill, adjunct professor of chemical engineering and winner of the College of Engineering Sporn Award; Katie Miller, an engineering science and mechanics major and winner of the Nathaniel Gebreyes Service Scholarship; and Shannon Jagodinski and Jeffrey Moore, both majors in mechanical engineering and winners of Paul E. Torgersen Leadership Scholarship award. Alpha Pi Mu won the SEC’s Society Award. Pictured left to right are Paul Torgersen, Alpha Pi Mu President Alex Lyddane, Jagodinski, Moore, Miller, and Durrill.
Update: The beam signing has been postponed until Thursday, April 19, because of rain. Faculty, students, and members of the community are again invited to lend their signature to the Signature Engineering Building. The times, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., will remain the same.
BLACKSBURG, Va., April 16, 2011 — The College of Engineering invites Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, as well as area residents, this week to place their signature and messages of goodwill on a steel beam that will be placed inside the under-construction Signature Engineering Building.
Signatures will be collected Wednesday, April 18, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in front of Randolph Hall, near the courtyard main entrance. Engineering departments, such as mechanical, chemical, and engineering education, will move to the $100 million, 150,000-square-foot Signature Engineering Building when construction is finished in spring 2014. The Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering also will have a showcase lab in the new facility. The building is located near the corner of Prices Fork Road and Stanger Streets on the north edge of campus.
The signature-adorned beam will be inserted into the “penthouse” of the building, a utility room set aside for mechanical operations such as air-handling and other mechanical operations. Placement of the beam will take place on Friday, April 20th, at a Topping Out ceremony to be hosted by Gilbane Inc., the contractor tasked with constructing the building.
“The ceremony gives us the opportunity to show our appreciation for the hard work and dedication of the people who have brought the project to this point. This major milestone marks the tail end of 1,200-plus tons of structural steel erection just 220 days from our Notice to Proceed and is the culmination of more than 50,000 man-hours expended to date,” said David Childress, project manager for Gilbane. “While the building is topping out steel erection on one wing, interior rough-in work is in full-swing on the other side of the building. This kind of progress is the direct result of a true teamwork mentality.”
Added Ed Nelson, associate dean and chief of staff for the College of Engineering: “Topping out is a chance for everyone involved in the project to take pride in how far we have come, safely, in such a short period of time.”
Construction on the building began October 1, 2011. Because of the mild winter, the project is three weeks ahead of schedule. Occupancy of the building is currently planned during the first quarter of 2014, said Todd Shelton, capital projects manager for Virginia Tech.
“The Signature Engineering Building will serve as the centerpiece of the College of Engineering, and a teaching tool for our students,” said Richard C. Benson, dean of the College of Engineering and who holds the Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Chaired Professorship.”
Highlights of the Signature Engineering Building project include:
The Signature Engineering Building has been part of the college’s capital plan since 2007.The efforts of several present and past members of the College of Engineering Advisory Board during the past five years helped spur this building to reality. Their efforts ranged from fundraising to helping gain attention and support for the building from the Virginia General Assembly and Governor’s Office.
The building was designed by Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects, based in Portland, Ore. Art McKinney, an alumnus of the College of Engineering, and president and founder of McKinney and Company, was helpful in bringing project costs in line, effectively reducing the cost of construction by more than $20 million.
The effort was helpful in more ways than one, as it was a persuasive factor in the anonymous gift of $25 million from a donor. The gift is the largest ever received from a single individual or family in Virginia Tech’s history.
Additionally, Michael Quillen, another alumnus of the college, along with his family, donated $3 million to the building. That gift will go toward the Signature Engineering Building’s 300-seat auditorium.
A 24/7 live webcam was installed this past fall on the roof of the nearby Whittemore Hall to capture construction of the Signature Engineering Building, and can be viewed online. Once complete, a time lapse video will be created and posted at the website.
In honor of National Robotics Week, here’s a sneak peak look at CHARLI’s new brother, SAFFiR, our bio-inspired bipedal robot designed for finding and extinguishing fires aboard naval ships. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, SAFFiR will use a variety of fire suppression methods including hoses, fire extinguishers, and PEAT canisters. Once his entire body is built – in the above photo, the robot tops out at the equivalent of a human sternum — he will be outfitted with a heat-protecting protective layer. More info: http://bit.ly/97Tbzy
The engineering students at Virginia Tech were chosen as the most philanthropic in the country for 2012 as well operating the nation’s best Student Engineers’ Council, according to the results of the recent annual competition hosted by the National Association of Engineering Student Councils (NAESC) at Purdue University.
Among the various accolades, Virginia Tech Student Engineers’ Council was cited for its allocation of over $100,000 to the University’s College of Engineering in the past year, as well as more than $1 million in the past 10 years. This money was used for various engineering projects including: partially funding more than 30 engineering organizations such as the internationally award winning hybrid electric vehicle team; the outdoor-terrain motorsport team; and the Baja and Formula Society of Automotive Engineers’ teams.
To fund these and other programs, the Student Engineers’ Council sponsors and organizes one of the largest career fairs in the nation, attracting some 250 companies each year to the campus to recruit its engineering students. Each company pays a fee to attend the job fair, based on sponsorship level and overall participation.
With the revenue generated by the career fair, the executive group of the Student Engineers’ Council makes requests for proposals from both engineering faculty and students on how to best spend the proceeds, while still making sure a portion is placed within one of the endowments held by the Virginia Tech Foundation.
“The students who contribute their time and energy to the Virginia Tech Student Engineers’ Council, especially the executive team, are indeed the leaders of tomorrow. They already represent the best and the brightest of our engineering students in the country, and their leadership and management skills are second to none,” said Lynn Nystrom, faculty adviser to the student group for more than 30 years.
“The students who make up our council dedicate most of their free time to the Student Engineers’ Council because we all believe that what we are doing is making an incredible impact on so many people. Our devotion to the council is outstanding and never takes a break,” said Jeremy Codiroli, the 2011-2012 chair of the council, and an industrial and systems engineering major of Chesterfield, Va.
Among the activities the members of the council have also conducted are: the underwriting of community service projects; planning of an outreach program to collect school supplies for low-income K-12 students; organization of a campus-wide Engineers’ Week celebration; development of an annual Leadership in Engineering conference; distribution of schedule planners to freshmen to help with their campus orientation; and the awarding of three annual scholarships, also from endowed accounts.
In addition to Codiroli, the other executive members of the council are: Allan Kirchoff, vice chair, of Richmond, Va.; Kevin Peterson, director of finance, of Clifton, Va.; Ben Clark, director of administration, of Woodbury, Ct.; Ashley Taylor, director of relations, of Fort Chiswell, Va.; Wes Matson, director of philanthropy, of Brentwood, Tenn.; Ben Drew, engineering exposition chair, of Hudson, Ohio; John Lohr, past engineering exposition chair, of Glen Allen, Va.; Matthew Donaldson, leadership in engineering conference chair, of Keller, Texas; Dustin Moore, information management chair, of Centreville, Va.; Alexander Dunlevy, engineers week chair, of Marlton, Va.; Ross Cooper, awards and scholarship chair, of Midlothian, Va.; Alek Leckszas, publicity chair, of Richmond, Va.; Paul Asbury, membership enrichment chair, of Bedford, Va.; Ben Codiroli, freshman chair, of Chesterfield, Va.; Brian Keller, undergraduate advisory member, of Charleston, W.Va.; and Dan Morton, undergraduate advisory board member, of North Huntingdon, Pa.
BLACKSBURG, Va., Jan. 30, 2012 – Virginia Tech College of Engineering researcher Stefan Duma’s work into making helmets safer against concussions for young football players will be in the national spotlight today as television journalist Stone Phillips brings the story “Hard Hits, Hard Numbers: The First Study of Head Impacts in Youth Football” to ABC’s “The View.”
Phillips, who played as a starting quarterback in high school and at Yale University before becoming a reporter on “Dateline NBC” and ABC’s “20/20,” also is debuting the full “Hard Hits” report on his website. He will show excerpts from the report on the well-known daytime talk show, co-hosted by Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and others. The report is live today.
“We all know how fierce the hitting is in professional, college, and even high school football,” said Phillips, who suffered two sports-related concussions during his time playing. “For the first time, this study gives hard, sobering numbers on head impacts among the youngest players.”
The Emmy Award-winning journalist taped his exclusive report at Virginia Tech during the week of Jan. 16, talking to Duma, team doctors for the Virginia Tech Hokie football team, and coaches, parents, and young football players of the local Auburn Elementary School, near the university.
In a first-of-its-kind study, Duma and his research team from the Virginia Tech–Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences provided new helmets, outfitted with special impact sensors, to the 7- and 8-year-old players of the Auburn football team.
During the course of one season, Duma and his research team, including Dr. Gunnar Brolinson, of the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, collected data on more than 750 hits to the head that the young players sustained.
The findings were startling.
Some of impacts endured by the children, around the age of third grade, reached magnitudes considered high even for college players. The highest recorded impact was measured at 100-g, as in gravitational force, the measurement associated with an object in its acceleration relative to free-fall. Concussion territory, according to Duma, Virginia Tech professor of biomedical engineering and head of the School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.
Another significant fact of the federally-funded study: Most of the highest head impacts were recorded during practice.
The findings by Duma and his research team provide the first quantitative assessment of the acceleration that young brains are exposed to in youth football. “This shows how important our research is,” Duma said. “Without the sensors, we would never have known this. We can change the practices like we’ve done at college and dramatically minimize risk.”
Brolinson, chief doctor for the Virginia Tech football team, told Phillips, “With the kids, when you start seeing 50, 60, 70, or 80-g blows, you’re just going, ‘Wow,’ that is really impressive in terms of the load that’s occurring. You’ve got a young athlete and a developing brain subject to those kinds of loads, so its concerning.”
For years, Duma has been studying head injuries from impacts, and how improved helmets can reduce concussions, skull fractures, and other injuries that can debilitate or kill. His work began in the military sector, focusing on Blackhawk helicopter pilots and other military personnel who face very clear and present dangers in the line of duty, be it from shrapnel or in-coming fire, or impacts from vehicle crashes.
In 2003, Duma said he was inspired to bring his head impact study closer to home, to the Virginia Tech football team. With Brolinson and head team trainer Mike Goforth, Duma did just that.
Within a few years, as many as 64 members of the 100-strong team wear wearing helmets outfitted with sensors, tracking helmet-to-helmet impacts and other hits players take to the head. Hits can be studied in real time as the sensors inside the helmet send data wirelessly to a sideline computer in real time.
“We’re able to see on the screen, the direction of the blow, and the force of the blow,” said Brolinson.
More recently, his research team created a rating system to test adult football helmets in their ability to sustain heavy blows, while protecting the player. The ranking system for football helmets is just the beginning of what Duma has dubbed the National Impact Database, a full testing facility and ranking system that eventually will cover ice hockey and baseball, among other sports, when fully implemented.
Duma’s groundbreaking work has been covered by The New York Times, ABC News, ESPN, CNN, Time, and U.S. News & World Report. Duma says he sees the media coverage as helping to make sports safer.
“Helmets and concussions are so heavily covered by the media now, and it is important to do what we can to minimize the risk,” Duma said. “How the game is played is changing as we modify coaching and practice schedules to reduce head impacts, as well rule changes and game officiating. Those changes are the most important, and beyond that we want to have the best helmets possible. Our contribution is to provide a framework and independent data to help determine which helmets are better.”
Duma’s study on youth helmets is expected to be published this spring.
[ABOVE PHOTO:] Emmy Award winning journalist Stone Phillips recently visited the lab of Stefan Duma, head of the Virginia Tech — Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, as part of Phillips’ story, “Hard Hits, Hard Numbers: The First Study of Head Impacts in Youth Football.” (Image by Debra Del Toro-Phillips.)
Virginia Tech's College of Engineering is known throughout the nation for the excellence of its programs in engineering education, research and public service.
