Monthly Archives: November 2011

SCE students have Pizza with the President!

On September 29, 2011 SCE students enjoyed a Pizza with the President Info Session with the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) President Christopher Stone, P.E., F.NSPE. Students learned why Professional Engineering (P.E.) licensure is important and how it extends careers by broadening the responsibilities and leadership opportunities for engineers that achieve P.E. licensure. For the past 7 years the incoming NSPE president has included a morning at SCE as part of the NSPE president’s annual visit to Kansas City, the 4th largest engineering hub in the nation.

The meet and greet with President Chris Stone, P.E. and his delegation, prior to the info session, was attended by SCE Dean Kevin Truman, NSPE/MSPE student chapter President Jason Painter, Webmaster Taya Upkes, Treasurer Michael “Tyler” Martin, and faculty advisors Dr. Khosrow Sohraby, P.E. and Dr. Jesse Sherwood, P.E. A visit to Linda Hall Library, considered by many to be the world’s greatest private, not-for-profit science, engineering and technology library, and just one block from SCE’s Flarsheim Hall was also arranged. The UMKC MSPE/NSPE student chapter is affiliated to NSPE on the national level and is locally mentored and provided sponsorship by the Western Chapter of the Missouri Society of Professional Engineers here in Kansas City.

MoDOT uses SCE students’ design

Students in the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Computing and Engineering’s Fall 2009/Spring 2010 Civil Engineering Capstone Design course, taught by Professor Deborah O’Bannon and Adjunct Professor Thomas Kimes, have created a design that the Missouri Department of Transportation recently used to improve traffic operations along Route 50 in eastern Jackson County. In early November, MoDOT hosted a ribbon-cutting for the improved highway in Lone Jack, Mo.

During the 2009-2010 academic year, MoDOT partnered with UMKC to give Civil Engineering students an opportunity to receive hands-on experience while creating a design to improve traffic operations at five intersections along Route 50 in eastern Jackson County. The students were tasked with the job of using innovative design techniques to find viable solutions to improve these areas. Through close interaction with MoDOT engineers, the students created a design that met MoDOT’s approval and was constructed along this section of Route 50. Complete story is posted at http://www.umkc.edu/news/announcements/civilengineering1111.asp.

ECE student Clement Lumanyika awarded IEEE PES Scholarship

SCE electrical computer engineering student Clement Lumanyika was selected for a 2011 Power and Energy Society (PES) Scholarship Award – Region 5. This is the inaugural year for these scholarships and Clement is one of 93 PES undergraduate scholars. Criteria used to select scholars included “academic preparation; extra-curricular activities and leadership; interest in engineering in general, and power and energy engineering in particular; and overall assessment of student’s potential for a successful power and energy engineering career.” A list of all the 2011 PES scholars can be found at 2011 PES Scholarship Award Winners announcement.

Deep Medhi & Baek-Young Choi local hosts for GEC12 Conference

UMKC is proud to host The 12th NSF Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Engineering Conference (GEC12) that will take place November 2-4, 2011, in Kansas City, Missouri, at the Student Union Building The GEC is the National Science Foundation’s GENI Project Office’s (GPO) regular working meeting where researchers, developers, industrial & international partners and the GPO meet to advance infrastructure planning and prototyping for the GENI project on future networking. At this event, researchers from around the country will demonstrate their latest work on future networking prototypes. Pre-registration is required.

Evolving technological and social networks, intertwined and worldwide in scope, are rapidly transforming societies and economies. GENI is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation, is open and broadly inclusive, providing collaborative and exploratory environments for academia, industry and the public to catalyze groundbreaking discoveries and innovation in these emerging global networks.

GENI is a virtual laboratory at the frontiers of network science and engineering for exploring future internets at scale. GENI creates major opportunities to understand, innovate and transform global networks and their interactions with society. Understand. Innovate. Transform – Make an Impact on Global Networks.

UMKC is involved in Great Plains Environment for Network Innovation (GpENI), one of the GENI funded projects. UMKC is partnering in the GpENI project with University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln to set up an international research testbed for future network research. Deep Medhi, Curators’ Professor, and Baek-Young Choi, Associate Professor, are leading the effort at the UMKC end.