A man smiles and poses for a photo in a brightly-lit hallway.

$5 million gift from alumnus and family creates pathway for 60 first-generation students per year

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When electrical engineering alumnus Joe T. May ’62 was in high school, he says he wasn’t exactly on a successful path. After a suspension for smoking cigarettes — something that today, May said, “wouldn’t raise an eyebrow,” but did then in the small Mennonite community he lived in — May’s principal allowed him to graduate only if he promised “to …

Three men stand behind a small yellow underwater autonomous vehicle and pose with smiles for a photo.

Mapping the ocean floor leads Virginia Tech team to earn a slot in $7 million international competition

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Nineteen teams went in and only nine — including Virginia Tech’s own DEEP-X — came out of the first round of a global competition to build autonomous vehicles that can rapidly map the mostly unknown ocean floor. The DEEP-X team, led by Dan Stilwell, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Virginia Tech Center for Marine Autonomy and Robotics, has earned …

A man wearing a white hard hat and a red sweater reaches toward the ceiling, where he adjusts orange wires linked to a data acquisition system.

Making buildings smarter, starting with Goodwin Hall

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There’s still much work to be done before our buildings are smart enough to talk to us. But from a lab located in the most accelerometer-instrumented building in the world, Rodrigo Sarlo is doing his part to get us there. Sarlo, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, was recently awarded a research fellowship from …

A man inspects a piece of equipment in a lab setting.

New Virginia Tech professor first to fully track behavior of carbon compound in air, changing future air research

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By being the first to fully track the changing chemistry of carbon molecules in the air, a Virginia Tech professor could change the way we study pollutants, smog, and emissions to the atmosphere. Gabriel Isaacman-VanWertz, lead scientist on a new study published in Nature Chemistry and assistant professor in the Charles Edward Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has established …

Screenshot of a cover image for a story in a digital magazine. In the old photo, Joe Ware gives a speech at a podium while wearing a hat that reads "Ware Lab."

The little-known backstory of one of Virginia Tech’s most popular labs (VT Engineer Magazine)

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Ask any Virginia Tech engineering student about the Joseph F. Ware Jr. Advanced Engineering Laboratory, and odds are they’ve stepped foot in it. Arguably the most popular lab on campus and hallmark of the Virginia Tech undergraduate engineering experience, the Ware Lab is a 10,000-square-foot facility, split into nearly a dozen bays full of tools, materials, and student design projects. It’s …

Screenshot of the cover image of the magazine story on Dean Julia Ross, with a photo of Julia Ross smiling while sitting in a chair in an empty, airy hallway.

Meet the new dean (VT Engineer Magazine)

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Before Julia M. Ross became dean of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech; before she became engineering dean at University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and before she pursed her Ph.D. and bachelor’s in chemical engineering, she was a girl inspired by astronaut Sally Ride. “I remember reading in magazines about her and her mission, and I thought that was the coolest thing,” Ross said. …

Screenshot of a cover image for a story in a digital magazine. In the photo, several members of the Hyperloop team are pulling and pushing along a pod on the sidewalk.

From Reddit to racing with Elon Musk

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On a Sunday night 15 minutes before midnight in early November, a group of undergraduate engineers is still wide awake. They’re stationed at TechPad, a local coworking space, trying to figure out how to not catch their Hyperloop pod on fire. “So, could we find a more efficient way in a triangle configuration?” asks Bobby Smyth, a senior from Yorktown, …

Two students look to the sky, colored purple and light blue by the sunset, as they watch their drone fly overhead.

Autonomous robots in the desert (VT Engineer Magazine)

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Last winter, a team of engineering graduate students regularly ventured out to Virginia Tech’s Kentland Farm. They’d drive past fields of cows and farmland until they reached a small garage and strip of asphalt. It’s here they’d unload a set of autonomous vehicles: several drones and a ground vehicle. They’d place markers made of tape and tarps on the concrete …

Screenshot of a cover image for a digital magazine story. In the photo, two young women focused on in a crowd look attentively forward while watching an out-of-frame presenter.

Rolls-Royce inaugural Ph.D. Day opens doors for innovative, collaborative research (VT News, College of Engineering, VT Engineer Magazine)

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Rolls-Royce is more than just automobiles. That’s the message being spread by Joseph Krok, the university research liaison manager at Rolls-Royce. The company has, in recent years, turned its focus to aviation — specifically, aircraft engines. “As you can imagine, gas turbine engines are incredibly complex and highly technical,” said Krok, who acts as a connector between the London-based company …