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, …
Home of the future takes first place at international competition (VT News)
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 …
House of the future and team that built it head to international competition (VT News)
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 …
Welcome to the new academic year from Dean Ross
Welcome to the new academic year from Dean Ross Today is the first day of classes at Virginia Tech! Dean Ross reflects on the year past and extends warm wishes for a successful academic year ahead. Posted by Virginia Tech College of Engineering on Monday, August 20, 2018
The difference a video workshop makes
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 …
Congratulations, class of 2018
Spring 2018 Commencement Congratulations, class of 2018. Posted by Virginia Tech College of Engineering on Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Alumnus tackles young alumni engagement with grassroots efforts
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 …
Challenging education spurs alumnus’ varied career, inspires him to give back
John Grizzard walked into his final engineering exam at Virginia Tech three days before his graduation in 1985. With the diploma so close, he and his classmates hoped the professor might take it easy on them. “We’re all seniors in the class and we’re all thinking, ‘oh, we’re all going to graduate, this is going to be an easy exam, …
Making buildings smarter, starting with Goodwin Hall
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 …