Lessons in resilience

When three Oregon State students signed up for a project in the university’s new humanitarian engineering program, the first question was, Have any of you made soap? Nervous laughter broke out when each one said “no.”

“Ok, this will be fun,” Brianna Goodwin recalls thinking.

Three College of Engineering marine energy initiatives to receive Department of Energy funding

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office recently announced support of up to $22 million for 10 marine energy research projects, including three represented by researchers from Oregon State University’s College of Engineering. (The award amounts for each project are under negotiation.) 

Mechanical engineering helps student prepare for takeoff

When Kristen Travers went to see the 2017 film “Hidden Figures” her senior year of high school, she inadvertently found her career path.

“I was just so blown away and inspired by Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn,” she said. “The math that Katherine Johnson was doing in the movie was the same math that I was learning in my calculus class at that time. I thought, ‘This is so cool. I have to study engineering.’”

Putting robots to work down on the farm

When you think of robots, chances are you picture them in an industrial setting, such as an automotive assembly plant. But one field where robots are poised to make a big impact over the next couple of decades is literally out on the field — in farms and orchards, harvesting food crops.

Mechanization in agriculture began in earnest with the advent of the tractor, which had become standard farm equipment by the 1930s. Today, only about 2% of the U.S. workforce works on farms, compared to about one-third around the time of World War II.

Beck awarded DOE fellowship

Peter Beck, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, has been awarded a three-year fellowship through the United States Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program.

Beck received one of just 33 graduate fellowships for students pursuing nuclear energy-related disciplines.

“This funding will allow me to continue my studies and pursue the technology to make nuclear energy safer, more efficient and less environmentally impactful than ever before,” said Beck.

New faculty joining MIME

Joseph Agor, assistant professor of industrial engineering.

Agor’s main research interest is in data driven optimization with applications in health care. More specifically, he is interested in using linear, integer, and multilevel optimization techniques to develop data driven decision support tools for decision makers in health care both at a system and patient level. He received his Ph.D. in Operations Research at North Carolina State University. Prior to joining Oregon State, he was research assistant for Edward P.