Top Stories

	Engineering Leaders Dr. Bernard Gordon, known as the father of analog-to-digital conversion and for breakthroughs such as the fetal heart monitor and portable CT scan, has given a transformative gift to the School of Engineering to advance its engineering leadership education programs.
	Monitoring Change Kofi Aninakwa (E'11) uses the Summer Scholar program to combine medicine and engineering through the creation of a wearable health monitor. Working with Sameer Sonkusale, electrical and computer engineering assistant professor, Aninakwa has spent this past summer building electrical circuits for this health sensor.
	STOMP Goes to Google The Center for Engineering Education and Outreach's program called STOMP--Student Teacher Outreach Mentorship Program--now has an branch called iSTOMP in which Tufts students train industry engineers, like those at Google, to reach out to local schools and improve existing science, technology, engineering, and math curriculum using LEGO.
	Mapping the Technological Edges Graduate student, Shahan Nercessian's research gives computers the 'vision' to make advances in medical and security imaging. The algorithms that Nercessian writes help computers determine the edges of an object, like the outline of a tumor in an MRI scan or a suspicious package in the airport security scanner.
	Graduate Student Diversity Day Successful This summer, more than 140 undergraduate students from underrepresented groups visited Tufts campus to learn more about advanced degrees from Tufts' professional schools, as well as programs in Arts, Sciences and Engineering. This conference provided a window into higher education possibilities for students who, traditionally, make up a small percentage of the graduate student population in the United States.
	Solar House Teaches Tufts Students Sustainability Engineers Dante DeMeo (E'08), Matt Thoms (E'10), and Mike Sidebottom (E'10) are three of the students working on the design and construction of an affordable and energy-efficient solar house as part of the 2009 Solar Decathlon competition. Tufts University, in conjunction with Boston Architectural College, has begun building the 800-sq ft. home for display on Washington, D.C.'s National Mall.
	Engineer Wins Environmental Scholarship Matthew Thoms (E'10) has been named a Morris K. Udall Scholar for 2009. Candidates are selected based on commitment to environmental research and issues. As an engineer passionate about sustainability, Thoms' focus is on renewable power generation and his current research involves increasing the efficiency of solar panels.
	Alumna Named a New Face of Engineering Sarah Freeman (E'05, EG'08), a water resources engineer for the Louis Berger Group, has been named as one of the 2009 New Faces of Engineering by the National Engineers Week Foundation. Freeman recently conducted a two-year study using global water data sets and GIS to give a much richer picture of water availability in Africa than traditional studies have shown.
	Exploring Attributes of Engineering Leadership As part of Tufts School of Engineering's commitment to educating tomorrow's engineering leaders, the school hosted an engineering leadership panel to discuss both what makes an effective engineering leader and how to teach these attributes to future engineers. Watch a video of the event.
	Engineering Innovation Gives Electric and Hybrid Cars a Boost Technology developed by Ronald Goldner, Engineering Professor Emeritus, could recharge the batteries of any hybrid electric and electric-powered vehicles, thereby increasing the miles per gallon or total driving range performance of vehicles like the Honda Civic by 20 to 70 percent. The technology actively uses the weight of a vehicle for energy recovery and could help speed the expansion of the hybrid and battery electric vehicle market from cars to vehicles of greater size, weight and payloads.
	Flights of Fancy: Engineers Create Virtual Hang Time Engineer Mike Stefaniak, along with teammates Daniel Thayer and Rachel Yu, created a virtual hang gliding flight simulator for their mechanical engineering senior project. Take a virtual flight.