College of Engineering alumni, faculty, staff, and supporters helped cheer on the Long Beach State Men’s Basketball team to a 74-72 victory Saturday over top-ranked Hawaii State during the Inaugural Engineering Night at the Pyramid.
The evening began with a pre-game reception for members of the Dean’s Advisory Committee, featured an engineering-themed half-time show, and culminated with a post-game celebration that drew more than 200 College of Engineering alumni, supporters, faculty, and staff.
For the half-time event, the College of Engineering sponsored a contest to test how well contestants could fly a plane while simultaneously playing a computer game. The contest used a flight simulator cockpit that Northrop Grumman donated to help engineering faculty conduct research on how multitasking affects a pilot’s flying ability.
The half-time contest pitted Raina Aydelott, an electrical engineering graduate student and president of the Associated Engineering Student Body, against alumni Lu Nguyen, a 1984 CSULB electrical engineering graduate, who both played tic-tac-toe while operating the simulator. Aydelott prevailed after the plane Nguyen was “flying” crashed.
The half-time show was emceed by alumni Jim Green, CIO of Chevron Upstream and Chair of the Dean’s Advisory Council’s Alumni Subcommittee.
A team of faculty and staff, including Computer Engineering and Computer Science Lecturer Bob Ward and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Equipment Technician Joe Wardell, trucked the simulator across campus from its normal home in a research lab. Research assistant Punleuk Oum, who has trained more than 60 people on the simulator, briefed Aydelott and Nguyen on how to fly the simulator.
After the game, the simulator was returned to the lab, where it will be used for an ongoing study by the CECS and MAE departments. The study is being conducted by Dean Forouzan Golshani, CECS Chair Burkhardt, CECS Professor Mehrdad Aliasgari, Ward, Oum, and MAE Assistant Professor Praveen Shankar.
At the post-game celebration, the CSULB Mars Rover team demonstrated their rover to interested alumni and supporters.