Photos by Chance Saechao.
Working toward bachelor’s degrees in energy systems engineering and sustainability at Oregon State University-Cascades in Bend, Dallas Bennett is dedicated to designing greener systems on a local level.
“I’m from Silverton, Oregon,” Bennett said. “Growing up in a small town, I have a tight-knit sense of community. It would be really nice to work directly with any community that I’m a part of.”
Photos by NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCL, and Kerry Dahlen.
Last Christmas, Amrit Nam Khalsa, B.S. mechanical engineering ’18, woke up to a wonderful gift: the perfect launch of the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope, the largest, most complex space telescope ever built.
“I thought, ‘Finally, this is actually happening.’ Then I thought, ‘Now comes the hard part,’” Khalsa said. “The launch was not necessarily the hardest thing the telescope had to endure. There were still weeks of nail-biting deployments and positioning.”
If John Lienhard could eradicate one word from the English language, it would be “innovation.”
“It’s a waffle word. How about that?” he said, offering a more temperate formulation in place of one deemed too salty for print.
Lienhard prefers “invention,” a word that industry leaders conspicuously avoid, he says, because of its world-changing implications.
Graduating with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering and an aerospace engineering minor in June 2022, Brittany Blanksma-Stark is eager to apply what she has learned in the College of Engineering toward creating a better future — and, possibly, exploring new worlds.
Growing up, Elaine Gething Davis, ’49, would hear an airplane soaring above her family’s coastal Oregon farm and rush outside with everyone else to watch it. Later, living near a military base during World War II, she was amazed by the variety of airborne machines leaping into the sky. After the war, her father bought a surplus airplane and gave the whole family flying lessons. Thus began a lifelong fascination with things that fly.
When she arrived at Oregon State College in 1945, she was the sole woman in her mechanical engineering class.
Two engineering graduate students at Oregon State University and one recent alum have been selected as fellows in the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
The rescuers search for survivors in the darkness of a vast labyrinth, deep below the surface. They squeeze through tight spaces, navigate blind turns, scramble over obstacles, and struggle to avoid innumerable traps laid for them. One wrong turn could spell disaster. Communication is limited. And time is running out.
Although Bridger Cook is just beginning his graduate studies in mechanical engineering after taking courses through Oregon State University’s Accelerated Master’s Platform, he started to prepare years ago as an energy systems engineering undergraduate at OSU-Cascades in Bend.
By changing the consistency of silicone rubber, John Morrow, a graduate student in robotics, enabled a 3D printer to assemble silicone into complex shapes. The breakthrough could hold the key to 3D printing of silicone soft-bodied robots.
Morrow and his colleague, Osman Dogan Yirmibesoglu, a Ph.D. student in robotics, presented their findings at the 2017 Graduate Research Showcase.
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.
