April 27, 2022

More than a thousand students in Enterprise and Senior Design showcased their hard work last Thursday at Michigan Tech’s 22nd Annual Design Expo event. Teams competed for cash awards totaling nearly $4,000. Judges for the event included corporate representatives, community members and Michigan Tech staff and faculty.

As we’ve come to expect, judging for Design Expo is often very close. This year we had several ties. Visit the Design Expo website to see the list of award winners in the categories of Enterprise, Senior Design, Image Contest, Innovation Awards, Audience Choice Awards, as well as the 2022 Enterprise Program Student, Faculty and Staff Awards.

In addition, visit the Design Expo website, where you can view videos and project info submitted by all 80-plus student design teams who took part. Congratulations and a gigantic thanks to everyone for a very successful 2022 Design Expo!

Central Michigan University (CMU) and Michigan Tech collaborate each year to offer Michigan Tech students a chance to compete in CMU's New Venture Challenge (NVC). This showcase event provides an opportunity for students at both universities to present their businesses and network with prospective investors, mentors and partners. Student participants also compete for a total of $60,000 in prizes and in-kind services.

On Friday (April 22), four Michigan Tech teams pitched their ideas and businesses in person on CMU’s campus in Mount Pleasant. Husky Innovate team members Jim Baker (associate vice president, research administration and Husky Innovate co-director) and Lisa Casper (Husky Innovate program manager) attended to support teams and strengthen innovation/entrepreneurship connections.

Students had an opportunity to compete in either the two-minute pitch competition or the seven-minute business model competition, as well as a gallery competition where teams had tables with individual displays and took questions from attendees.

In preparing for the NVC, the students participated in a number of Husky Innovate workshops and review sessions. The students also benefited from resources and expertise available within MTEC SmartZone, the local state-funded technology business incubator, and the Upper Peninsula Regional Small Business Development Center, which is hosted by the Office of Innovation and Commercialization in collaboration with the College of Business. The results below speak to the tireless efforts of our students and the impact of the programs provided by Husky Innovate and its partners.

NVC award winners are as follows:

Two-Minute Pitch Competition

• Jakob Christiansen (construction management) won first place and received $4,000. Christiansen pitched “ProBoard,” an e-commerce platform to solve issues in the construction material supply chain.

Seven-Minute Pitch Competition

• Bayle Golden (engineering management) won first place in the Social Mission category and received $10,000. Golden pitched “SafeRow,” an innovative wearable device designed to keep children safe when every second counts.
• Rourke Sylvain and Ali Dabas (both biomedical engineering) won second place in the High Tech High Growth category, receiving $5,000. Their pitch was “imi (integrated molecular innovations),” an electrochemical biosensor for T4 detection.
• Jordan Craven (management information systems, minoring in computer science) won third place in the High Tech High Growth category and received $2,000. Craven pitched “Tall and Small Designs,” a technology company that provides software as a service to retailers who sell clothes online.

Congratulations to our Husky Innovate student teams for all their hard work! We are proud of your grit during the last week of the semester. Your ideas are innovative and have the potential to change the world.

Thanks go out to our distributed team of mentors and our sponsors (Pavlis Honors College, Office of Innovation and Commercialization, College of Business, College of Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Civil Engineering) for their commitment to our students. We also thank CMU and especially Julie Messing, director of the Isabella Bank Institute for Entrepreneurship, for the collaboration and congenial hospitality. 

Nathan Sodini, a student dual majoring in engineering management and finance, and Hillary Prout, accounting major, are the 2022 Sam Tidwell Outstanding Man and Woman in Business.

To read more about Sodini's and Prout's accomplishments, head to the College of Business Newsblog.

The Vice President for Research Office announces the Spring 2022 Research Excellence Fund (REF) awards. Congratulations to all of the principal investigators!

Thanks to the individual REF reviewers and the REF review panelists, as well as the deans and department chairs, for their time spent on this important internal research award process. REF proposals for the Fall 2022 semester are due Oct. 13.

Awarded principal investigators include:

• Scholarship and Creativity Grants
  William Breffle (COB)
  Adam Wellstead (SS)
  
  
• Research Seed Grants
  Paul Goetsch (BioSci)
  Myoungkuk Park (ME-EM)
  Dan Trepal (SS/GLRC)

Next Thursday (May 5) from 8-11 p.m., Michigan Tech IT will be performing network maintenance that will cause wireless network downtime. This maintenance will only affect the wireless network.

If you have any questions or concerns, we can help. Contact us at it-help@mtu.edu or call 7-1111.

​Please join the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics (ME-EM) as we gather to celebrate the retirement of William W. Predebon on May 13 in the Rozsa Lobby.

Predebon has dedicated over 45 years of teaching, research and service to the department and to the University — including 25 years in the role of department chair. His passion for Michigan Tech is inspiring and legendary!

Stop by the reception for drinks, hors d'oeuvres and cake from 4-5 p.m. A celebration program, emceed by Greg Odegard, will follow from 5-7 p.m. with speeches and stories from those who know Predebon best.

RSVP to Jade Driscoll at jdriscol@mtu.edu or 906-487-2810. Please be sure to include whether any guests will be accompanying you.

We hope to see you there!

Linda Ott, one of the first Michigan Tech Department of Computer Science (CS) faculty members, was inducted into the College of Computing (CC) Honor Academy on April 4.

Currently CS's chair, Ott started her career at Michigan Tech in 1987. She is recognized for a lifetime of work advancing the department and more generally broadening campuswide participation in computing. Among her accomplishments is her work to grow the CS at Michigan Tech, now the second-largest major on campus.

“Linda is the heart and soul of computer science at Michigan Tech,” said Dennis Livesay, Dave House Dean of Computing. “Linda’s legacy is within our alumni, our growing prominence and our exciting future.”

Ott has devoted a large chunk of her time and energy at Michigan Tech opening the eyes of women and girls to the joys of a computer science education. For her efforts, she was named the first recipient of Michigan Tech’s Diversity Award in 2014.

Ott leads current CS outreach initiatives, including the successful Women in Computer Science program, one of the University’s annual Summer Youth Programs (SYP), and the annual Google-sponsored workshop, “Exploring Computer Science Research,” which explores research opportunities with undergraduate college students.

Read more about Ott's career and achievements on the College of Computing News Blog.

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Stephen Morse for winning the 2022 Mechanical Engineering (ME) Teacher of the Year Award! Morse taught a double section of MEEM 2150 Mechanics of Materials for the 2021-22 academic year.

Morse has been with the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics (ME-EM) since 2017, with a joint appointment in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE). He earned his Ph.D. from Texas Tech University in 2009, and he previously served as an assistant professor at Texas Tech in the civil, environmental and construction engineering department. Morse's areas of research expertise include window glass strength and design, wind loads on structures, finite element modeling of brittle materials, large-scale data processing and data mining.

The ME Teacher of the Year Award is selected solely by mechanical engineering students and conducted by the Mechanical Engineering Student Advisory Committee (MESAC). It is a two-step process similar to the process employed by the University teaching award. The first stage is the selection of the top three, voted upon by ME students. In the second stage, MESAC students go into all the spring classes of the three finalists with a questionnaire, which contains several questions about the finalists' teaching, including why students believe they should be the ME Teacher of the Year.

Morse received a certificate and his name on the ME Teacher of the Year plaque with past winners in the lobby of the R.L. Smith Building (MEEM).

The award was announced during ME-EM's 2022 Order of the Engineer ceremony, which was held in the Memorial Union Ballroom on April 19. This year's runners-up were ME-EM Senior Lecturer Jaclyn Johnson and ME-EM Lecturer Mary Zadeh.

The Office of Continuous Improvement is offering a virtual workshop, "Countermeasures: Solving Common Problems using Lean Methods and Tools Workshop (Virtual)," from 9 a.m. to noon next Wednesday (May 4).

Countermeasures are the actions we take during experiments to close the gap between what is currently happening and what we want to happen. The workshop explores several Lean methods and tools that are used as countermeasures for common workplace issues.

To see the workshop description and register, complete the brief registration form or visit our website. Once registered, we'll add you to a calendar event for the course.

This workshop will be taught virtually using Zoom and Miro. There will be a brief pre-work assignment before the workshop, and you'll receive a certificate after completing a post-work assignment.

This workshop is part of the Lean Basics workshop series. If you complete all five workshops in the series, we’ll award you a Lean White Belt certificate! For more information, email improvement@mtu.edu. 

Saturday (April 30)
• CSGO ESEA vs. Second City, 8 p.m.

Sunday (May 1)
• CSGO ESEA vs. Heavy Triggers, 9:30 p.m.

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Esports News
Read more MTU Esports news in Assistant Esports Director Chris Gelety's weekly update.

Michigan Tech women's tennis will make its sixth straight GLIAC Tournament appearance Friday (April 29) when the No. 6 seed Huskies take on No. 3 seed Grand Valley State in the quarterfinals.

Based on the weather conditions, the match will start at either 3 p.m. (outdoor) or 6 p.m. (indoor) in Midland.

Free video streaming links will be posted to the GLIAC Tennis Tournament webpage and Tennis Radio will be broadcasting the event for the first time.

Read more at the Michigan Tech Athletics website.

Presidential Professor Emeritus John Johnson (ME-EM) is a co-author of an article published in SAE Update, News & Insights for Mobility Professionals.

The article is titled "Regulatory CO2 emission standards are needed for BEVs. BEVs don’t have tailpipes and, as a result, they erroneously register as zero CO2 under today’s regulations."

Kelly Senecal, visiting professor, University of Oxford, is also a co-author.

From the article:
The original EPA certification test procedures from the 1970s were developed to regulate criteria pollutants exhausted from vehicle tailpipes and fuel economy of internal combustion engines. At the time, this made sense — liquid-fueled internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) dominated the market, there were very few battery electric vehicles (BEVs) available, and CO2 was not yet regulated as a greenhouse gas (GHG). Fast forward to today, and we still regulate based on the tailpipe alone. But this once-logical methodology no longer adds up. BEVs don’t have tailpipes, and as a result, they erroneously register as zero CO2 under today’s regulations.

CEGE Senior Design Colloquium

The Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geospatial Engineering (CEGE) is pleased to invite the University community to attend our spring 2022 Senior Design team presentations.

Presentations will run from 8 a.m. to noon Friday (April 29) in EERC 103, Dow 641 and Dow 642.

Find more CEGE Senior Design Colloquium information — and Zoom links if you'd like to participate virtually — on the CEGE Undergraduate Advising Blog.

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Rural Hazard Resilience Tools Project Seeks Your Input

An NSF-funded project is seeking your input in developing rural hazard resilience tools. The focus of this project is to help Houghton and Baraga counties enhance flood disaster resilience. You can participate in three ways:

1. Complete the 2022 MTU Community Resilience Survey.
   Through this survey, we are seeking information on your perspective on community resilience and associated indicators. The survey takes about eight minutes to complete.
   
   
2. Upload flood photos from Houghton and Baraga counties.
   Do you have photographs from the 2018 Father's Day flood or any other flooding in the past in our community? If you would share those photos, they could be valuable input for improving the flood models for our area.
   
   
3. Like and share the project on social media platforms.
   We would appreciate your help in spreading the word on this project in the community. Please like and share the project on these social media platforms:
   • Facebook
   • Instagram
   • Twitter

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Tree Dedication to Honor Late SAIS Director Karen Hall

The family of Karen Hall will host a tree dedication ceremony to celebrate her life at noon Friday (April 29). Hall, the former director of Student Affairs Information Systems (SAIS) at Michigan Tech, passed away in November 2020 following a battle with cancer. 

The dedication will take place in front of the Academic Office Building. All are invited to attend, and campus community members will be invited to make remarks during the dedication.

Please contact Bryant Weathers at weathers@mtu.edu or 906-370-9149 if you have any questions.

The Daily Mining Gazette ran a story about the Earth Day Dinner hosted at Michigan Tech by the Sustainability Demonstration House. Undergraduate students Kendra Lachcik and Xavier Kriege and McNair Hall Dining Manager Jill Patterson were quoted in the story.

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Crain’s Detroit Business and WJMN Local 3 mentioned Michigan Tech as one of two Upper Peninsula recipients of a $40,000 grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). The grants were part of $600,000 distributed by EGLE with the goal to support watershed organizations in conservation and educational efforts.

To have your event automatically appear, please submit them to the University Events Calendar.

Teal Ribbons

Wednesday, April 27, 12:00 a.m.–11:45 p.m. | Campus!

Have you seen teal ribbons? Help raise awareness for Sexual Assault Awareness Month by scanning the QR code and participating in SAVE and Title IX's Octopi project and get the...

Puppy Parade for Awareness

Wednesday, April 27, 5:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m. | Kestner Waterfront Park

Sign up to participate or volunteer for the in-person event and/or virtual event here.

Pub Night @ The Mitten Brewing Company

Wednesday, April 27, 6 p.m.–9 p.m. | The Mitten Brewery Co.

Hit a Home Run with Grand Rapids Huskies! Join your fellow Michigan Tech alumni, friends, and family from the Grand Rapids, MI area for a pub night at The Mitten Brewing Co.,...

Denim Day

April 27, all day | Michigan Tech Campus

Michigan Tech Title IX invites you to proudly wear denim with a purpose on Wednesday, April 27, for International Denim Day to support survivors and educate our community...