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More Efficient Base Stations Needed to Handle Future Cellular Energy Demand

Ender Ayanoglu, keynote speaker at the IEEE Green Energy and Smart Systems Conference, with chair Henry Yeh.

Mobile device use is exploding. With the rise of the Internet of Things, today’s 5 billion connected devices could increase tenfold by 2020, according to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index.

Information and communication technologies are already responsible for up to 4 percent of the carbon footprint. That amounts to one-quarter of what vehicles produce and the equivalent of what air travel produces.

The mobile growth projections raise two questions, said University of California Irvine Professor Ender Ayanoglu, keynote speaker at the IEEE Green Energy and Smart Systems Conference at the Pointe Monday. Continue reading “More Efficient Base Stations Needed to Handle Future Cellular Energy Demand”

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Beavers Endowed Chair Delivers Talk on Heavy Civil Construction Industry

William Wolfe

Beavers Endowed Chair in Heavy Civil Construction William Wolfe on Monday extolled the advantages of a career in heavy civil to a class of civil engineering and construction management students.

”Heavy civil is the infrastructure part. You’re got vertical and you’ve got horizontal. We’re talking about the horizontal,” he explained.

Heavy civil projects include bridges, dams, roads, tunnels and transportation and water systems. One advantage of that career path, he said, is that the projects are tangible and easy to explain. “When you talk about these big projects, you don’t need to explain yourself,” he said. Continue reading “Beavers Endowed Chair Delivers Talk on Heavy Civil Construction Industry”

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New Faculty Add New Technical Expertise to College of Engineering

New tenure-track faculty joining the CSULB College of Engineering in Fall 2018 bring expertise in solid composite propellants, fluid dynamics, machine learning, and multiprocessor system-on-a-chip.

Joseph Kalman hails from the Combustion Science and Propulsion Research Branch at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division in China Lake, where he has worked since earning his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014. Continue reading “New Faculty Add New Technical Expertise to College of Engineering”

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Cybersecurity Applications Minor Intended to Help Close Skills Gap

Cybersecurity skills are in high demand. According to Cyber Seek, there are currently more than 10,000 openings in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area for cybersecurity workers. Nationwide, there are more than 300,000.

To help close the skills gap, the CSULB College of Engineering this Fall is introducing a Cybersecurity Applications Minor. The 18-unit program is designed to provide students with skills to help in job seeking and career building. The minor is open to any student with at least a 2.0 GPA. Continue reading “Cybersecurity Applications Minor Intended to Help Close Skills Gap”

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Environmental Engineering Team Takes Top Spot at ASCE Competition

The Cal State Long Beach team clinched a first-place win in last weekend’s Environmental Competition at the annual ASCE Pacific Southwest Conference for building a water treatment system for less than $500. The three-day competition, which drew 1,300 students from 18 universities to Arizona State University, lets students put their civil or environmental engineering skills to the test.

College of Engineering Dean Forouzan Golshani congratulated the students on their excellence. “As we move forward toward a more robust and standalone program in environmental engineering, student interest already places us above other universities,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure how we would do at first,” said Anesia Canty, Environmental Team Captain and president of the CSULB chapter of Engineers for a Sustainable World. “Last year, UCI, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and CSU Fullerton got the top spots, so I knew we had to be at their level to place.” Continue reading “Environmental Engineering Team Takes Top Spot at ASCE Competition”

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MAE’s Yan Li Wins Best Paper Award

CSULB Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor Yan Li has won a Best Paper Award for her research on materials properties.

The paper, “Probabilistic Fracture Toughness Prediction of Composite Materials,” was presented at the 8th International Conference on Computational Methods (ICCM2017) in Guilin, China, in July 2017.

It explores the challenge of predicting the variation of material properties such as strength and fracture toughness in material-sensitive design, and the development of an integrated computational and analytical model to predict fracture toughness in a statistical sense. Continue reading “MAE’s Yan Li Wins Best Paper Award”

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MAE Team Preps Remote-Controlled ‘Nutcracker Box’ for Its Stage Debut

MAE faculty, staff, and student team

Each year, Long Beach Ballet Artistic Director David Wilcox tries to add some new crowd pleaser to his production of “The Nutcracker”—be it a flying sleigh, a white stallion, on-stage pyrotechnics, or a tree growing before your eyes.

This year, for the company’s 35th annual production of the popular Christmas classic, the extra pizzazz will be supplied by a box created by a team of students led by Long Beach State Mechanical Engineering Associate Professor Chris Beyer.

But it’s not just any old box. This 7-foot cube is remote-controlled, produces clouds of steam, and is mechanized to let the Nutcracker prince pop from the top at just the right moment. Continue reading “MAE Team Preps Remote-Controlled ‘Nutcracker Box’ for Its Stage Debut”

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Caltrans Testers Test Out New Construction Materials Program

They usually test construction materials. But this week, two dozen Caltrans and industry technicians from throughout the state were at Cal State Long Beach to test out a new program to increase quality and reduce delays on construction projects.

Supported by a $1.3 million interagency agreement with Caltrans, and implemented by CSULB, the Joint Training & Certification Program (JTCP) will deliver training and certification for materials testing technicians in the specialties of Hot-Mix Asphalt, Soils and Aggregates, and Portland Cement Concrete.

Asphalt for testingThis week’s two-day pilot class, a combination of seminar and lab, was intended to iron out any wrinkles before the first classes begin early next year. “I hope you have a great experience,” principal investigator Shadi Saadeh, a CSULB civil engineering associate professor, told the testers. “I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to offer your feedback.” Continue reading “Caltrans Testers Test Out New Construction Materials Program”

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Female Faculty Share their Stories

They each had a story of how they got here. An early interest in science. The influence of family members or mentors. Even a random selection in an academic catalogue.

But the CSULB female engineering faculty who shared their backgrounds with Society of Women Engineers members all had one thing in common: a passion for research.

Civil engineering Assistant Professor Pitiporn Asvapathanagul’s path included a stint working in her family’s Thai restaurant. She’d earned her undergraduate degree in environmental engineering in Thailand when her family beckoned her to move to the U.S.

Eventually, her desire to return to engineering led her to earn a master’s degree and doctorate from University of California Irvine. At CSULB since 2012, Asvapathanagul is an expert in biological water reclamation. Continue reading “Female Faculty Share their Stories”

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Electrical Engineering Grad Student Wins a Best Paper Award at NAPS

While an undergraduate at UCLA, Edward Sanchez gravitated toward research. His skill recently shone through at the IEEE 2017 North American Power Symposium (NAPS), where he won a Best Paper Award.

The paper, “Model Predictive Energy Scheduling for a Building Microgrid,” details how to design a control system to coordinate the micropower sources and utility grid demand of a proposed building microgrid. The research is part of a $2.5 million California Energy Commission project to turn the Engineering & Computer Science Building into a Smart Building. Continue reading “Electrical Engineering Grad Student Wins a Best Paper Award at NAPS”