Interesting Internship

Siemens Power Generation in Erlangen, Germany

seas.virginia.edu

Angela Widhalm was born with

an international perspective. Her father is American, and her mother German. It is no surprise, then, that she was determined to spend at least a semester of her four years at SEAS overseas. It took foresight, initiative, and a bit of luck, but thats exactly what she achieved. In the summer after her second year, Widhalm, an electrical engineering major, secured an internship at a local division of Siemens, the German engineering powerhouse. She performed well enough that Siemens oered her an internship for the following year at Siemens Power Generation group headquarters in Erlangen, Germany. Before she left, she discussed her internship plans with former Engineering School Dean Richard Miksad. Miksad suggested that she consider adding classwork at the Technical University of Munich to her stay abroad. By cutting back her internship

from three months to seven weeks, Widhalm was able to accommodate the better part of the German semester, which runs from April to October. At Siemens Power Generation, Widhalm used her facility with German and her knowledge of engineering to help ensure the accuracy of documents produced in English. She also worked on a multidepartmental proposal-writing team, visited a number of power plants, and sat in on technical design meetings. Two weeks after she completed the internship, she began taking classes in Munich. Its a very dierent system from the one we have in the U.S., she says. Youre much more on your own. You attend classes less often than you do here and homework is not given as a general rule. She took courses on nancial management, multimedia communications, and business organization, among other subjects, and lived in an apartment in student housing. Now back in the United States, Widhalm is energized by her experience. My time abroad conrmed my intention of working for a large international corporation, while giving me a dierent perspective, she says. Ive seen how it is possible to maintain a healthy balance between work and the rest of life.
After Graduation

April 2005 | Volume 6 | Number 1

University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science

In this issue:

Ginger Moored
Ginger Moored wants to have a positive impact on peoples lives. Thats why she taught physics and math in Dunbar High School after graduation as part of the Teach for America program. I felt that teaching would have a direct impact on people and their community, she said. At Dunbar, Moored learned a few lessons of her own. She learned that good teaching is not easyand that good teaching is just a start. Its hard for an individual to be eective in a troubled school system and when employment, violence, and housing are community issues. Moored is now pursuing a masters in public aairs and urban and regional planning at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Aairs at Princeton University. She is studying school-based community centers that can provide healthcare, life skills, and afterschool activities for students and their families. In a way, shes trying to promote the kind of community she found at the Engineering School. The community of students and faculty at the E-School transformed a set of brick buildings into a special place for learning and discovery, she says. Community centers can be a meeting place for people that can enlarge

An Introduction to

Innovation
At U.Va., we dont wait to give students a
taste of what engineering is really like. During their rst semester, all U.Va. engineering students take ENGR 162, Introduction to Engineering, where they learn engineering by doing engineering: applying fundamental physical principles to solving real-world design problems. Though the overall goals are the same for every section of ENGR 162, a number of faculty members have developed distinctive approaches. John Bean, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, was motivated by the realization that many students enroll in the engineering school without really understanding how exciting engineering can be. Our goal is to help students make an informed decision about their future, he says. This means giving students the opportunity to do engineering their rst year. Bean has created a series of challenges using Lego Mindstorms robotic kits and assigns ve-student teams to each one. Likening his position to a vice president of research at a large company, Bean makes assignments and stands professor of materials science and engineering, introduces a topic like homelessness and, after providing background on the issue, asks teams of students to dene an aspect of the problem and propose an appropriate solution. The class then chooses a single project that it works on collaboratively for the rest of the semester. I want to teach students to dene problems as well as analyze and solve them, he says. The semester Elzey focused on homelessness, his class designed an emergency homeless shelter that doubles as a park bench. Professor Paxton Marshall, associate dean for undergraduate programs, gives his ENGR 162 students actual clients and a budget. They work with teams of drama students who are writing and directing one-act plays, all of which involve special eects. The engineering students task is to create these special eects, on time, within budget, and to the clients specications. The students were impressed by the creativity and eort of the playwrights and directors, Marshall notes. They felt that they had a high standard to live up to and they worked very hard. It is important for students not merely to understand but to truly feel that what they do as engineers really matters.

Railguns Are Rocket Science Growing Capillaries Majoring and Minoring The Spirit of Accessibility German Internship and Study Engineering and Policy

Factoid: The Technical University of Munich, founded in 1868, has produced ve Nobel Prize winners among its faculty. It oers degrees in medicine, science, and engineering. Fifteen percent of 20,000 students come from overseas.

their horizons.

I want
students to immerse themselves in the engineering experience.

aside while students develop their own solutions. I want to create an environment for students to immerse themselves in the engineering experience, he says. Professor Dana Elzey takes a dierent approach. I introduce the social, cultural, environmental, and economic context into my ENGR 162 section, he says. After all, it is this context that provides the rationale for the work engineers do. Each semester, Elzey, an associate

U. S. Postage Nonprot Organization

PAID
Charlottesville, VA Permit No. 164

Ofce of the Dean University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science P.O. Box 400246 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4246 434.924.3072 seas.virginia.edu/impact

Students in one section of ENGR 162 identied the need for emergency homeless shelters, designed a prototype, and built it. Nicholas Skirpan tries out the shelter while James Mello looks on.

Undergraduate Innovation

Launching a Railgun Lab

Its easy to understand the fascination
of railguns. They are the hot rods of linear induction motors. Apply a powerful electromagnetic energy pulse to a railgun, and you can shoot a projectile at speeds just over 13,000 miles per hour. Thats the kind of number that makes people straighten up and pay attention. It certainly attracted the attention of Ben Roberts. The fourth-year student is the driving force behind a student-run initiative focusing on optimizing railgun design. Railguns have been considered for launch systems for space transportation, national defense, and communications. Before they become practical, researchers must master a host of questions raised by systems that must accommodate intense bursts of very large current and rapidly accelerating parts. Roberts systematically attacked the various elements needed to get his project o the ground. He already had access to a power supply, and he understood that other researchers would nd themselves in the same position. So he chose to build a small-scale prototype that he could use to develop code for optimizing the eciency or velocity of a railgun with a given power supply. Roberts realized that this was not a doit-yourself project, so he recruited a team of students with diverse interests and enlisted the help of two faculty advisersScott Barker, from electrical and computer engineering, and Dana Elzey, from materials science and engineering. He also secured equipment and laboratory space from the Engineering School. Theres a tremendous amount of support here for student initiative, he says. In addition, Roberts set out to secure funding. At Barkers suggestion, he wrote a grant proposal to the Army Research Laboratory. I spent about a month last summer doing research and then sat down and wrote the grant after work over the course of a week, Roberts says. As far as I knew, no U.Va. undergraduate had ever
The fastest gun in the world. The propulsion speed of a railgun developed at Sandia National Laboratory is 20 km/ sec.almost three times that necessary to escape the gravitational pull of the Earth (about 7 km/sec.). It would send material from New York to Boston in half a minute.

Student Focus

Getting Around with John Macdonald

received a government grant before, but I thought it was worth a try. Evidently the Army was impressed; they replied with a $2,700 grant. Roberts and his team are now building their second-generation prototype and are closing in on the problems associated
Third-year student John Macdonald has been interested in computers since middle school. So it comes as no surprise that Macdonald is pursuing a degree in computer science at U.Va. He is doing so successfully while coping with the disabilities caused by Friedreichs ataxia, a rare, genetic neurodegenerative disease that

Real Research

has conned him to a mobilized wheelchair. Ever since I started sticking out as having a handicap, I just wanted to t in, Macdonald says. I feel that Ive been able to do that at

As far as I knew, no U.Va. undergraduate had

Building Better Capillaries

Amber Turner was sitting in class
one day during her second year when her biomedical engineering professor, William Guilford, made the point that if students were serious about pursuing a postgraduate because there is no blood ow within them. Turner and Blackman decided that creating a laboratory model with blood ow to these newly formed vessels would be an excellent project for her senior thesis. One of the challenges Turner faces is getting the capillaries to grow in an orderly pattern, making it easier to perfuse them with blood. With the assistance of a Harrison Research Award from the University, Turner has had a series of collagen tubes made using a special electrospinning process. The hope is that when these tubes are inserted into the collagen gel, the endothelial cells will seed themselves along their interior and be provoked to create a regular sequence of capillaries when stimulated by ow. While Turner has high hopes for the success of this project, she expects surprises along the way. One thing Ive learned is that you have to be adaptable to work in the lab, she says. You expect things will go one way, and they go another.

ever received a government grant before, but I thought it was worth a try.

SEAS. Its a welcoming environment. One reason is the schools emphasis on teamwork, recognition that everyone has a contribution to make. For instance, Macdonald is a member of the student-run Solar Car Team, which is preparing an entry in the North American Solar Car Challenge 2005, a 2,500mile race from Austin, Texas, to Calgary, Alberta. Macdonald is working on the cars telemetry system and maintains the teams Web site. Another reason for Macdonalds successful experience is his determination to stay active. Having taken several years of Japanese, hes now co-editor-in-chief of the Inkstone, a literary magazine that focuses on Asian-American culture. I know that things take a bit longer for me, so I just have to think about my choices more carefully.

with optimization. This project has grown in scope the more weve worked on it, and theres clearly a lot more to be done, Roberts says. Our goal now is to build relationships with the Army and other funders so that students can continue working on these problems after we leave.

degree in the eld, hands-on lab experience as an undergraduate would be a plus. Turner didnt have to be told twice. She contacted Brett Blackman, whose work on endothelial cell biology tied into her interest in tissue engineering, and asked to be part of his lab. It was an easy sell. Turner is both a Rodman and Jeerson scholarand Blackman quickly brought her on board. Blackman studies how mechanical forces within the human cardiovascular system control the development of blood vessels. Research in this eld depends on robust laboratory models. Currently, researchers can put endothelial cells in a 3-D collagen matrix and encourage them to form capillaries, but the new blood vessels begin to break down after a short period of time. One hypothesis is that they disintegrate

Double Majoring and Minoring Thomas Jeerson was a man of many interests. He was an inventor, architect, statesman, scientist, and educator. So it is quite tting that students studying engineering at Mr. Jeersons University have the advantage of cultivating and broadening their own talents by majoring or minoring in subjects oered by other schools at the University. For instance, Danielle Gause is one of those people who easily could have found a home in the College of Arts & Sciences. In fact, the

biomedical engineering major applied to the College and then switched to SEAS at the last moment. I nally decided that I wanted to learn about something I didnt know anything about, she says. At the same time, Gause didnt want to give up her passion for art, so she found time in her schedule to minor in studio art. It took a bit of planning, but it was worth it, she says. And the combination of art and engineering has been great. I feel more creative in engineering because of the time I spend painting and drawing.

Julia Lancaster is double majoring in Spanish simply because she hated to give it up. I had taken Spanish since I was in the eighth grade, and it seemed like a waste to stop, she says. Since I have been here, I studied abroad in the Universitys Valencia program. It was wonderful. The electrical engineering major is also minoring in physics, thanks to an Air Force ROTC scholarship that supports her through a fth year of study. Computer science major William Kammersell decided to

double-major in cognitive science because he likes the intellectual challenge of a field that incorporates computer science, psychology, philosophy, linguistics, and neurology. You can really shape this major to your own interests, he says. He has also found that being an engineer has proven a plus. In linguistics, analyzing dialects was easy for me, while students in the College hated it, he remarks. Clearly, being broadly educated works both ways.