Mines Kinetics Team Wins Tropy

The Mines Kinetics team made history with a series of firsts during the annual race held in May at the Boulder Reservoir.

Not only did the team actually finish the course, but came home with a trophy for winning the "Campus Cup" award as the first college team to complete the course. Seven Mines seniors - Chris Germer, Jeff Hammer, Grant Hudish, Trey Rodgers, Dan Stackhouse, John Steinhoff and Dorgan Trostel - placed 15th overall in the KBCO/Miller Lite Kineticks.

"It was brutal," said Julie Van Laanen, adviser and engineering adjunct instructor. The course included 11 land-to-water transitions, a 6-foot mud hill and bogs. Out of more than 40 teams to enter the competition, Van Laanen estimated half were able to finish the course.

The race, which is both technical and performance-based, pits-costumed competitors against each other in human-powered crafts built to navigate land and water. The Mines Kinetics team was contracted by Joel Bach, an engineering professor, to build a vehicle that required no pushing - it had to be ridden through all transitions.

Designed with simplicity in mind, the team's tricycle device consisted of aluminum tubes welded to a tandem bicycle for the frame and two inflatable side-pontoons for flotation. It carried two people and had a built-in propeller for water propulsion as well as rotating arms that allowed the craft to lower the pontoons when entering the water and raise them when exiting.

Van Laanen said the Mines team was in fourth place when the front fork of its device crumpled. Anticipating the design's weak spot, the team came equipped with a spare. But the repair cost them about 30 minutes - the same amount of time between the team's finish and that of the overall winner, Van Laanen noted.

Each member of the team was assigned a unique role: Rodgers served as a judge, Hudish and Stackhouse were the pilots, Germer and Hammer operated as the pit crew, and Steinhoff and Trostel were photographers.

Funding for the annual design challenge is provided by Lockheed Martin and the Thorson Fund, a Senior Design endowment.

Mines Competition on the Forefront of Space 2.0

Mines sees the future in "Space 2.0" - the expanding business and investment opportunities opened up by a new era of space exploration. The Lunar Ventures Student Business Plan Competition, developed by Mines' Center for Space Resources, brings new ideas to the field of space commerce. The student competition considers business plans, designed by college students from across the country, to integrate space technology into the global economy.

"Our strong field of finalists exemplifies where space commerce is heading," said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Center for Space Resources at Mines. "Each team provides a glimpse of what the coming new era of space business is going to look like and the very real possibilities for the next weave of development and practical application of existing and emerging technologies."

In the first annual Lunar Ventures competition, held on campus in May, students competed as entrepreneurs before a national panel of judges with both technical and business expertise. The judges selected 10 finalist teams - three of which were from Mines - to compete for $25,000 in cash and additional services to help launch their ventures, including an opportunity for a $100,000 investment. A team from San Diego State University was declared the winner. The team's venture, Omega Sensors, Inc. (OSI), offers improved accelerometer technology. Applications range from increasing oil production to improving space vehicle navigation systems.

A team composed of Mines physics graduate students Darick Baker, Luke Erikson and William Rance, along with Erik Spahr from the College of William and Mary, placed as one of three runners-up. Their venture, Kronos, develops technology and commercial markets for collecting meteorites on the Earth and later on the moon.

The Kronos team won a $3,000 prize, plus a chance to present their venture to NASA and to a Silicon Valley investor's forum on space technologies to be held this fall. The other runners-up included students from Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Emory University.

"Each team's submission offers a unique vision for bringing space resources and technology into today's marketplace," said Gary Cadenhead, Lunar Ventures director. "Many of these ventures, like grand champion OSI and the three runners-up, are fundable today."

Mines will host the competition again in 2008. For more information on Lunar Ventures, go to www.8clunarventures.com.

Society of Women Engineers Partners with High School for Energy Sciences Week

As part of an ongoing effort to engage y oung women in the sciences, Mines professor Mark Lusk and five members of the School's Society of Women Engineers (SWE) visited St. Mary's Academy - a private, all-girl high school in Englewood - for "Energy Science Week" this spring.

The idea came about when Lusk and Mines SWE advisor Candace Sulzbach discussed the development of energy-related outreach programs for women in engineering sciences. For Lusk, the father of a five-year-old student at St. Mary's Lower School, it seemed an ideal place to start.

He was right. The SWE members - Andrea Stephens, Lauren Doyle, Carrie Kneppe, Bailey Smith and Kristi Selden - and the energy-based subject matter were met with enthusiasm.

"The high school girls were very interested. They were keen to find out more about the energy sciences," Lusk said of the 15 students in the advanced chemistry class. "Our women were role models in the extreme. The connection between 17-year-olds and 20-year-olds was immediate and great to see. The girls peppered our SWE members with questions about the labs and about college in general."

Lusk said he'd like to continue the outreach and work with other Mines groups, including the Society of Women Physicists, to conduct different programs each semester at a number of area schools.

"I ahve four sisters - all of whom are a heck of a lot smarter than I am," Lusk said, adding his mother was a high school calculus teacher. "Why didn't they all get excited about scientific research the way I did? That is something that has really bothered me - I think there was a bias. I think the classroom wasn't set up to engage them."

Exposing girls to the fun and exciting side of science at a young age is something Lusk thinks will encourage more to pursue futures in fields such as physics, chemistry or engineering.

The same group of St. Mary's girls that Lusk and the SWE team worked with subsequently turned around and taught a science lesson to some of the younger students at the school. Coincidentally, Lusk's daughter was among those getting such instruction, and that prompted her to start doing her own science experiments at home.

"My daughter now loves chemistry - she learned from those older students," Lusk said.

Foreign Journalists Tour Fuel Cell Center

A group of prominent international journalists visited Mines in May as part of a U.S. State Department tour focused on Colorado's emerging "new energy economy." The Colorado Fuel Cell Center on the Mines campus was one stop on the tour.

The 13 journalists, who represented major radio and television stations and newspapers in Switzerland, Germany, Korea, China, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic and Esonia, listened to presentations by Robert Remick, Robert Kee, Tony Dean and Neal Sullivan.

"Meeting with the foreign journalists provided an excellent opportunity to get a different perspective on fuel cells," said Remick. "In the U.S., we concentrate on the fuel efficiency aspects of fuel cells - for example, getting 50 percent more electricity for the same amount of fuel or getting twice the miles per gallon equivalent of a standard gasoline fueled vehicle. The foreign journalists on our tour were much more interested in the 'green' aspects of fuel cells - like low carbon dioxide emissions and no criteria air pollutants. However, top on the list of questions asked by the foreign journalists were, 'Where can I buy a fuel cell?' and 'How much will it cost?' and in that, they share common ground with their U.S. counterparts," Remick added.

In addition to visiting some of the state's top research institutions, the journalists met with Colorado business leaders and entrepreneurial start-up companies.

In Brief...

The new CTLM addition has been completed and the Academic Networking and Computing Department has moved there from its former home in the Green Center.

A team of three Mines engineers, Kong Han, Bernard Levy and Chester Van Tyne, received SAE International's Arch T. Colwell Merit Award during the recent SAE 2007 World Congress in Detroit. The team was recognized for their paper "Bauschinger Effect Response of Automotive Sheet Steels."

A research group in the Advanced Coatings and Surface Engineering Laboratory (ACSEL), consisting of John J. Moore, Jianling Lin, Brajendra Mishra, Sudipto Bhattacharyya, Malki Pinks and Sterling Myers, was presented with the best paper award at the 2007 Metal Castings Congress held in Houston in May. The award was the culmination of nearly four years of research work between ACSEL and the die casting industry.

Arpita P. Bathija, Haiyi Lian, Moneesh Upamanyu, Ning Lu and Manika Prasad from the Geophysics, Materials Science, and Engineering departments have been awarded a Clay Minerals Society Research and Travel Grant for their interdisciplinary work on "Elastic Properties of Clays" using nanoindentation and molecular simulation.

Distinguished Senior Scientist Warren Hamilton, Department of Geophysics, will recieve the 2007 Techtonics and Structural Geology Career Achievement Award of the Geological Society of America at the Society's annual meeting in Denver in October. Hamilton recieved the Society's highest award for research, the Penrose Medal, in 1989 and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Robert L. Siegrist has been awarded certification by eminence and welcomed into the American Academy of Environmental Engineers as a Board Certified Environmental Engineer.

Ambassador Mohd Azhari Bin Abdul Karim of Malaysia will spend fall 2007 in residence in LAIS as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar. The Malaysian Prime Minister's office has assigned the topic of energy policy in the U.S. for Azhari to research during his stay. Upon his return, Azhari will head an energy policy research center at the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang.

Ning Lu has received the 2007 American Society of Civil Engineers Norman Medal, recognizing his work in unsaturated soils as published in the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering.

Postdoctoral researcher Amy Clarke is the recipient of the eigth Willy Korf Award for Young Excellence. The award, named in honor of the late German steel industrialist, is given annually to one graduate student worldwide to recognize the contribution of the student's research to the steel industry. The award was presented during the Stel Sucess Strategies XXII: New World, New Opportunities, New Crises converence in New York in June.