Spectra Newsletter

The AIMS2 program had a prominent place on the agenda at the annual summit of the Computing Alliance of Hispanic-Serving Institutions (CAHSI), held September 10-12 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. CAHSI is a consortium of Hispanic-serving institutions committed to consolidating the strengths, resources and efforts of organizations that share the core value of increasing the number of Hispanics who pursue and complete baccalaureate and advanced degrees in computing. In addition to CECS dean S. K. Ramesh, who gave a workshop on the results and lessons learned from the AIMS2 collaboration, Gloria Melara, professor of computer science, and Vidya Nandikolla, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, attended the meeting, along with Jan Swinton, an AIMS2 project collaborator from Glendale Community College. A group of students who had worked on the U.S. Department of Education HSI-STEM web portal for grantees took part in an all-day poster session, where they demonstrated the site.

“We were invited because of the work we are doing,” says Ramesh. “All the attendees talked about what we can do to attract more students and support them, and the students who accompanied us were able to show how the project work they had done had helped them academically and professionally.”

Michael McAlpine[/img]Early in the morning on January 17, 1994, a massive earthquake struck the Los Angeles area, causing $400 million in damage to the CSUN campus. In the aftermath of what came to be called the Northridge quake, Michael McAlpine was assigned by his then-employer, AECOM, to provide construction management services to help rebuild or retrofit several major CSUN buildings. As he grew increasingly familiar with the campus, he also became involved in the effort to launch a construction management program in the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

Today, McAlpine, now a vice president and project executive for the Construction Management Division –Western Territory of STV, Inc., is a longtime friend of the college, wearing two hats: one as a member of the CECS Industry Advisory Board and the other as chair of the advisory board for construction management.

“I think what I bring to the board is my relationships with clients and other firms in the industry, to help students find jobs and internships and give them an industry perspective,” he says. [Read more…]

They come from across town and from around the world. They represent all five CECS departments and distinct areas of expertise: smart materials and structures, fracture mechanics, human-computer interaction technologies, thermofluid sciences, thermodynamics, analog circuits, non-destructive testing, conceptual risk analysis frameworks, biomedical engineering and structural and earthquake engineering (and more). While their fields and backgrounds may be diverse, they share a common commitment to teaching and research and to making a difference—at CSUN and in the world. Meet the new faculty
of 2015-16.

Peter Bishay
Mechanical Engineering

Peter Bishay enjoyed physics and math so much in high school that a career in engineering pretty much seemed inevitable.

“I really like the statement that mathematics is the language God used to create the whole world,” he says. “All phenomena around us are governed by equations whether we know them or not. And in engineering, we’re trying to mimic those phenomena to create new things.”

Bishay entered Cairo University in his native Egypt, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering in 2007 and 2010, respectively. He started his Ph.D. at Rutgers University, where he took graduate courses, taught as a summer instructor and conducted research for a year. He then transferred to UC Irvine to focus on the field of computational solid mechanics and smart materials and structures. He completed his doctorate in mechanical and aerospace engineering in 2014. [Read more…]

CECS teams had an outstanding record in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition between 2011 and 2014, twice placing first and twice placing second, against an average of 40-50 teams from around the world. But the 2015 team’s win truly broke new ground.

The competition calls for teams to design and build an autonomous unmanned robot that can negotiate a course with obstacles and perform certain assigned tasks.[Read more…]