Warmer afternoons bring students out and the campus springs to life with small groups lounging in the grass and enjoying the change of seasons. It also brings the culmination of a yearâs work â sometimes more than one year. Capstone projects showcase Vandal innovation and energy. Our studentsâ ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. Every day they are providing answers to real-world problems. Nowhere is that more true that at Engineering Design EXPO. The annual innovation event hosted by the College of Engineering engages K-12 students and provides a stage for Vandal engineers to show off industry-sponsored prototypes as part of our Interdisciplinary Senior Capstone Design Program. The in-person event is today, April 30, and the virtual technical presentations are open to the public. The events for high school students are ongoing through May. The event features teams solving real problems, like four of our engineering students who are capitalizing on the recent discovery that wildfires emit a low frequency rumble the human ear cannot hear. Engineering majors Meridian Haaas, Cory Holt Andrew Malinowski and Carlos Santos teamed up. They imagined hundreds of tiny devices dropping into the forest, sending back signals set off by the low drone of a wildfire. The devices are already, early in their development, outperforming expectations â sustaining falls of 20 feet to replicate being dropped from an airplane and sending a signal up to 12 miles. What a difference it could make in wildland firefighting to pinpoint a fire while it is small. It could save millions of dollars in suppression costs as well as protect private homes and high-value timber. That is the difference Vandals make. This includes Vandals like Margrit von Braun, our EXPO keynote speaker and environmental engineering graduate. She co-founded Terra Graphics International Foundation, a non-governmental organization assisting communities in poor countries to reduce environmental exposures and chemical disease. Her presentation, today at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time, as well as many other parts of EXPO, are available for a broad audience through various online channels. It doesnât seem to matter if the Vandal is just starting as an undergraduate, well into a career or retired, the mark each makes on the world is incredible. Vandals make Idaho â and the world â a better place. |