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

Erica Corder Photo, Video, Writing Leave a Comment

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, …

Students in orange team polos smile on a stage while one woman holds a trophy.

Home of the future takes first place at international competition (VT News)

Erica Corder Photo, Social Media, Video, Writing Leave a Comment

After years of research and development contributed by over 100 Virginia Tech students and faculty, the FutureHAUS Dubai team has officially built the world’s best solar home. The lone American team earned a first-place victory over 14 other selected teams and more than 60 total entrants of the 2018 Solar Decathlon Middle East, a competition launched by the United States Department …

People wearing safety vests and hard hats walk toward a trailer bearing a large portion of the house draped over with black tarp.

House of the future and team that built it head to international competition (VT News)

Erica Corder Photo, Writing Leave a Comment

The home of the future is en route to a temporary residence in the desert — and the Virginia Tech students and faculty who built it are following. FutureHAUS Dubai, an innovative, interdisciplinary, and ambitious project to design and build a futuristic, modular smart home, is the lone American team competing against 14 other university teams at the Solar Decathlon Middle …

A group of people smile and pose for a group photo in front of a black curtain.

The difference a video workshop makes

Erica Corder Blog, On Videography, On Work

In March of this year, I flew out to Oklahoma to attend the National Press Photographers Association’s 58th annual News Video Workshop. For a whole week, the talented faculty of the program pushed us for at least 12 hours a day to become better photojournalists. We would attend a full day of training seminars in the morning and afternoons, then …

A young man poses for a photo in front of a gray building.

Alumnus tackles young alumni engagement with grassroots efforts

Erica Corder Photo, Video, Writing Leave a Comment

Dan Surber is a problem solver. But the Virginia Tech alumnus, who graduated in 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial and systems engineering, saw a problem he alone couldn’t fix: he thought more young alumni should be engaged with the university. So when Eileen Van Aken, interim department head of the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, approached …

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

Erica Corder Photo, Writing Leave a Comment

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 …