Author: Leah Lamunyon

To celebrate National Engineers Week (Feb. 17-23), the College of Engineering is hosting multiple events, including several designed to include college staff and faculty, as well as two public events.

College staff and faculty are encouraged to attend the “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” event featuring various faculty members and the Engineering Bowling Night. Additionally, area high school students are invited to register for Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, and students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members are encouraged to participate in the public Wichita State Engineering 5k run/walk. View all National Engineers Week events, including several more student-focused events, or learn more below.

• Tuesday, Feb. 18: Vision Boards with Academic Advisors and Success Team from 2 to 4 p.m. in Partnership Building 2, room A119
• Tuesday, Feb. 18: ”Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in 110A Woolsey Hall
• Wednesday, Feb. 19: Carnival and Student Organization Fair from 6 to 8 p.m. in the John Bardo Center
• Thursday, Feb. 20: Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day for area high school students
• Friday, Feb. 21:  Bowling Night With Success Team, Faculty and Staff from 6 to 8 p.m. in Shocker Sports Grill and Lanes in the basement of the Rhatigan Student Center
• Saturday, Feb. 22: Wichita State Engineering 5k run/walk from 9 to 11:30 a.m., beginning and ending behind the John Bardo Center

As part of National Engineers Week, the College of Engineering is hosting a public 5k run/walk that is open to students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members. The 5k and awards ceremony will be from 9 to 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 22 on campus. The course is USA Track & Field (USATF) certified and will begin and end behind the John Bardo Center. Registration proceeds from the 5k and associated donations will go toward the College of Engineering Needs-Based Scholarship Fund.

Through Feb. 14, tickets are $15 for WSU students, $30 for WSU staff, faculty or alumni and $40 for community members. After Feb. 14, the registration costs will increase. Registration includes a free long-sleeve crewneck shirt, water and snacks at the event. Medals will be presented to the overall fastest participant, as well as the top three fastest participants in the students, staff/faculty, alumni and community members categories.

Dr. Jacob Mendez, assistant dean for student success in the College of Engineering, has established the Stanley L. Lewis Memorial Award for Outstanding Senior fund in honor of his late father, Stanley L. Lewis, who passed away in June 2024. Distributions from the fund will be available to an outstanding graduating senior from the College of Engineering annually. Award recipients will receive a plaque, be honored at the WSU Senior Honor and College Awards Banquet in the spring and receive a $750 prize.

“My father sacrificed some of his dreams to allow me to achieve my academic, personal and professional goals,” Dr. Mendez said. “I value student leadership and involvement in extra-curricular activities and created this award to recognize students for their outstanding achievements during their undergraduate career.”

The School of Computing within the College of Engineering has announced re-designation as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity (NCAE-C). The original designation was in 2019, and the re-designation is through 2029. The NCAE-C program, launched by the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1999, recognizes institutions meeting rigorous cybersecurity education standards.

On the evening of Dec. 5, six College of Engineering students took first and third place in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Wichita Section Holiday Banquet Undergraduate Poster Display in Woolsey Hall. Applied engineering students Lauren Bulcroft, Shyanna Edwards, Clayton Short and Oliver Harrison placed first. Pedro Cordeiro Povoa Cupertino (aerospace engineering) and Vicknesh Prasad (industrial systems and manufacturing engineering) placed third.

The first-place poster by Bulcroft, Edwards, Short and Harrison was titled “Finite Element Analysis of Stress and Strain in High Precision CNC Machine Tooling.” The group of students was advised by Dr. Adam Lynch, associate teaching professor in the Department of Applied Engineering, and Ridge Towner, a reliability engineer at Spirit AeroSystems. The third-place poster by Cupertino and Prasad was titled “Preliminary Systems Engineering Analysis of Energy Harvesting Methods for Forklifts.” The two students were also advised by Dr. Lynch.

“The WSU Applied Engineering department has a focus on hands-on learning and strives to integrate current industry problems into our courses,” said Dr. Gary Brooking, the chair of the applied engineering department. “This is an excellent example of the value of these types of collaborations which provided benefit to industry and significant learning opportunities for the students.”

The College of Engineering has been ranked 20th nationally out of 550 colleges and universities in the Cyber Power Rankings, which were created by Cyber Skyline in partnership with the National Cyber League (NCL). The rankings represent the ability of students to perform real-world cybersecurity tasks on the Cyber Skyline platform.

Students from the School of Computing within the College of Engineering and the Wichita Linux Users Group (WuLug) competed in the NCL competition throughout the fall 2024 season, including individual and team Capture the Flag competitions. The top team from Wichita State, SKY-SHOC-2024, ranked 16th out of more than 4,800 teams. Students and their rankings were as follows:

Individual game (8,485 total players):

• Steven Janssen: 86th
• Daniel Halbleib: 166th
• Charlie Hill: 186th

Team game (4,894 total teams):

• SKY-SHOC-2024: Steven Janssen, Daniel Halbleib, Aidan McGillivray, Harsh Subnani, Corbin Huisman, Charlie Hill: 16th
• Kali Girls: Divy Patel, Arpan Day, Alex Harms, Stockton Underwood, Sophie Clark, Liv Robl: 75th
• Club Penguin: Hyacinthe Howell, Jack Delmar, Juniper Riot, Sophia Hunt, Koral Richardson, Morgan Stewart: 86th
• aPun: Hannah Nikkel, Sean Dugan, Remington Derksen, Liam Moore: 101st

The College of Engineering is hosting its fall 2024 Engineering Open House event from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6 in the John Bardo Center. Senior students will feature their projects on the first floor and the second floor concourse, while students enrolled in the first-year seminar will feature projects in the second and third floor hallways.

Students, staff, faculty and individuals from both Innovation Campus partners and community organizations are invited to attend. The event is an opportunity for students to showcase their work and practice presentation skills, for staff and faculty to show their support, and for companies and organizations to see the work our students are doing, as well as interact with prospective job candidates.

On Friday, Nov. 15, graduate ambassadors from the College of Engineering hosted the annual Engineering Research Symposium in the Digital Research and Transformation Hub on the Innovation Campus. The symposium was from 2 to 5 p.m. and consisted of a poster competition that enabled students to showcase their research projects, develop their presentation skills and compete for certificates with cash prizes. Following the symposium, there was a presentation of awards and dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. The winners were selected within three categories and are listed below.

Proficient
The Proficient category was for doctoral students with three or more years of advanced study and research experience, with first place earning a $1,000 prize, second place earning a $500 prize and third place earning a $250 prize.

• First place: Ali Asgari, “Physics-Informed Artificial Intelligence For Failure Prediction of Spacecraft”
• Second place: Adrian Arustei, “Spacecraft trajectory optimization using adjoint sensitivities”
• Third place: Sangar Shanthanam, “A Multi Criteria Load Prioritization Framework To Minimize Social, Technical and Economic Losses during Major Power Outages”

Emerging
The Emerging category was for master’s degree students and doctoral students with one and a half to three years of study, with first place earning a $750 prize, second place earning a $400 prize and third place earning a $200 prize.

• First place: Md Raihan Uddin, “Enhancing Scalability of Heterogeneous Systems using Tiny Transformer and Attention Based Multi Agent Proximal Policy Optimization”
• Second place: Adelyn Heuer, “Modeling Electric-Vehicle Infrastructure Impact Using an Agent based Simulation Approach”
• Third place: Reilly Jensen, “Detecting and Classifying Cerebral Hemorrhage Growth Using Radio Frequency Resonance and Deep Learning”

Novice
The Novice category was for bachelor’s degree students and doctoral students in the first year and a half of study, with first place earning a $500 prize, second place earning a $250 prize and third place earning a $150 prize.

• First place: Sachinth Viththarachchige, “Social Equity Based Optimal Power Flow Framework to Hedge Against Price Events”
• Second place: Elmira Salari, “Towards Generalizable ECG Classification with Large Language Models and Domain Adaptation”
• Third place: Mark Angelo Ronaldo Anacin, “Enhancing Noise Robustness in Anti-Spoofing Systems using Speech Enhancement and Multitasking Models”

In addition to the above, there were two Scholarly Presence Awards presented to College of Engineering departments. The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering won an award for the highest student representation in the competition, and the Department of Industrial, Systems and Manufacturing Engineering won an award for the highest faculty representation at the competition.

On Friday, Nov. 22, the College of Engineering will host about 200 high school students and an additional 300 or so parents and guests for the Wallace Invitational for Scholarships in Engineering (WISE) competition. The event will be from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the second and third floors of the Rhatigan Student Center with optional events from 1:15 to 3 p.m. in the John Bardo Center. Parking lots 24 and 25 will be reserved for competition participants and guests starting at 7 a.m. the day of the event, and signage near the lots will alert drivers accordingly.

Although a private event, staff and faculty are encouraged to have positive interactions with students, parents and event volunteers when in common areas. WISE is a competition held each fall for eligible high school seniors interested in studying engineering or computing at Wichita State. The 10 winners of the 2024 WISE competition will be awarded $30,500 Wallace Scholarships.

The College of Engineering is hiring a recruitment coordinator to join its recruitment team. The role includes collaborating with faculty and staff to coordinate and expand student recruitment efforts. The individual will serve as the lead recruiter for schools and organizations that align with the recruitment strategy.

The position is open to both internal and external candidates. Applicants should have a bachelor’s degree and at least two years of experience in recruiting, retention, admissions or a related field.