Tuesday, November 8, 2011

DiscoverE Educator Awards


Apply today for the The DiscoverE Educator Awards! 

The DiscoverE Educator Awards are shining a spotlight on the educators who are inspiring tomorrow’s innovation generation. Winners will be recognized at event in Washington DC (all expenses paid), receive $2,000, and a 3M digital projector. Unique to this program, engineers and engineering students are part of the nomination process. The application is available at http://www.eweek.org/NewsStory.aspx?ContentID=256 and the deadline is December 1


Send completed applications to info@eweek.org.


Please share this program with teachers (Grades 6-12) who are inspiring our students to discover engineering AND engineers/engineering students who might be interested in nominating. 

An Update from Mark

Dr Gobin,

I hope the semester is going well for you. I know most of your lab undergrads are off on co-ops, so I'm sure that adds to the stress. Just wanted you to know Jake and I presented our posters to the math and science department teachers at male and a couple cool things came out of it. First a lot of our teachers were excited about applying to the program. And we are talking our national award winning teachers. They were really excited especially our science teachers who could really benefit from the experience. Secondly, we are probably going to set up some sort of tour, that will probably include the clean room. But that is yet to be determined. Other than that my kids have been asking lots of questions about my poster. It really has the curiosity up. So hopefully we will get some good results out of it. I just wanted you to know that it has definitely been worth it so far. If you need I can post this stuff on the blog too. Thanks again for everything.

Mark H

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Weekly Meeting - Meet the Freshman Faculty

This week's meeting will be focused on discuss with faculty from the sciences and math, to learn what are their expectations of freshman and how to help prepare them.

Invited attendees are:
Patricia Ralston - Engineering Fundamental
Christine Rich - Chemistry
Thomas Riedel - Math
William Huston - Physics

See you at 10am Thursday July 7

Friday, July 1, 2011

Spray Drying


It has been very interesting to see a couple different ways that technology can break things apart into nano sized particles. I have been using a spray dryer to make nano-sized particles. So far we have been getting sizes in the 200nm-500nm range, which is pretty exciting. It has been interesting because we are working with different mixtures and trying to determine which of our variables minimizes the particle size while at the same time creating a uniformly spherical particle. At the moment we are going through a Taguchi model, which allows us to test the different variables, without changing one at a time.
I am planning on using this program in my classroom called imagej. You can kind of see the tool bar that allows you to measure different things about your particles. Hopefully, you all can use this tool too. I am going to use it to get some measurements so that my students can collect their own data instead of me giving it to them. Also, I wanted to use this image, because the particle in the middle is clearly huge compared to the others. This in theory came through a spray head that is only 4 microns in size, which cannot be true. I want to talk with the students about what happened to make that particle and see what the students can come up with.
This has been a great experience so far. Hopefully everyone else is enjoying it too.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Link to 2010 HSTFP Blog

Wanna see what the teachers posted last year!
Check out there comments here : http://kynanonet.org/2010-fellows/

My experience so far...

This experience has been both exciting and educational for me. I have learned a lot about Knudsen pumps, thermal transpiration and thermoelectric energy; but more importantly, I have learned about what bioengineering research is all about. The people here at the University of Louisville have been hospitable, from student researchers to graduate students to professors. They are clearly passionate about the fields that they are researching and that passion is contagious. This program will allow me to better explain to my students and colleagues what the University of Louisville offers which will open doors for many students who may have never even heard of bioengineering. I am excited to see what the last week of this program will bring and I look forward to staying in touch with the contacts that I have made.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Welcome HSTFP

Welcome 
to the blogging site for the 
KY NSF EPSCoR: Engineering Platforms Initiative 
High School Teachers Fellowship Program (HSTFP)

This is a place to describe things you are learning, experiences your want to share and ideas you want to enhance.

You may generate discussions on any ideas you feel will help in the development of increasing the KY students in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

I look forward to seeing your comments. Please feel free to comment on each other's blogs as well.

***Please note that this blog is open to everyone to view. Please do not post any confidential information on the research being conducted - please check with your mentors if you are uncertain. ***