OU Engineering

January 4, 2011 SoonerSports.com NORMAN, Okla. — Oklahoma Track and Field alum Amy Backel was named one of eight recipients of the NCAA Today’s Top VIII Award the organization announced Tuesday. The two-time All-American and 2010 Big 12 champion in the javelin, Backel completed her Civil Engineering degree requirements with an overall 3.98 grade point average en route to becoming Oklahoma’s first ever, male or female, three-time CoSIDA Academic All-American. Backel was one of two track and field athletes nationally to receive the honor and the only student-athlete from the Big 12 Conference to do so. The NCAA Today’s Top VIII Award recognizes current student-athletes who will have completed their athletics eligibility for their success on the fields and courts, in the classroom and in the community. They will receive their award at the NCAA Honors Celebration on Jan. 14 at the 2011 NCAA Convention in San Antonio. The honorees are selected by the NCAA Honors Committee, wh...

By Karen Kelly CoE External Relations Coordinator Pictured are senior computer science students (from the left) Caleb Eggensperger from Cabot, Ark.; computer science professor and team coach, Rex Page; Peter Reid from Sherwood, Ore. and Allen Smith from Austin, Texas. It's a first place win for the first time for these senior computer science majors. Team "OU A" competed in the 2010 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) South Central USA regional programming contest. The competition consisted of 71 teams from Okla., Texas and La. Director of OU's School of Computer Science, Sridhar Radhakrishnan, said, "Our team was the only one to solve all eight problems. We still would have won without the final problem as we had the least completion time." Team "OU A" has been invited to compete in the ACM International Contest in Cairo, February 27 to March 4. Click here to view the competition scoreboard.

By April Wilkerson The Journal Record Posted: Monday, November 1, 2010 Donna Shirley at her Tulsa home. Shirley was a pioneer in the United States’ space exploration, managing the Mars Exploration Program in the 1990s and helping put Pathfinder, Sojourner and other probes into space. (Rip Stell) TULSA – As the manager of the Mars Exploration Program in the 1990s, Donna Shirley learned a thing or two about leading highly intelligent people charged with sending groundbreaking technology into outer space. Today, Shirley has turned that experience into a book, Managing Creativity, and she operates a consulting firm to guide others on managing creative teams. Shirley, who lives in Tulsa, has been part of America’s and Oklahoma’s seminal moments in aerospace engineering and aerospace education, and she continues to leverage her experience and wit to make a difference. “A lot of people think creativity is about coming up with this great idea; that’s only part of it,” Shirley said. “You have ...

October 26, 2010 Contact: Jana Smith, Director Strategic Communications for R&D University of Oklahoma 405-325-1322; jana.smith@ou.edu Norman, Okla.—A University of Oklahoma research team recently received a $2.9 million grant from the Department of Energy Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research to establish a new Center for Interfacial Reaction Engineering, which will focus on applications of biofuel and fossil fuel upgrading using a revolutionary concept developed at OU. Daniel Resasco, OU professor in the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering, will direct activities of the multi-institutional project, which includes team members Jeffrey Harwell and Friederike Jentoft, OU professors with expertise in colloidal chemistry and catalysis; Sanwu Wang, University of Tulsa professor with expertise in theoretical modeling of interfaces; and Khaled Gasem, Oklahoma State University professor with expertise in thermodynamic properties. According to Resasco...

FROM STAFF REPORTS Oklahoman Published: October 26, 2010 NORMAN — Oklahoma native William Pogue, an astronaut who spent 84 days orbiting Earth aboard Skylab, will give a free public chat at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the National Weather Center, 120 David L. Boren Blvd., on University of Oklahoma's south research campus. Pogue will share his experiences as an astronaut and answer questions. Pogue was command module pilot for Skylab 4, the third and final manned flight to the Skylab space station. He spent 84 days orbiting Earth and made two spacewalks that totaled 13 hours, 31 minutes. He also will present a $10,000 Astronaut Scholarship to OU senior Heather Hollen during his visit. The Astronaut Scholarship is the nation's largest scholarship awarded to science and engineering undergraduate students based solely on merit.

OU Daily By Elizabeth Oberg/Contributing Writer Monday, October 18, 2010 A panel of five jurors participated in OU’s WaTER Symposium to discuss key issues about solving the world’s major water problems on Friday. Estimating more than 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation, the World Health Organization also estimates more than 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. The WaTER Center’s mission is “to help solve drinking water and sanitation challenges for impoverished regions in developing countries through innovative teaching and research initiatives,” according to its brochure. “The only way to tackle a tough problem is to jump in and take it on one thing at a time. It can be done but it’s going to take all of us to contribute to the cause,” said Randy Kolar, associative director of the WaTER Center. Most of the symposium focused on the five panelists addressing the issues of the global water and sanitation crisis and the work they do, along with discussing ...

You are invited to the College of Engineering’s Open House of the ExxonMobil Lawrence G. Rawl Engineering Practice Facility. Come see for yourself what all the excitement is about! WHEN: Saturday, September 18 10:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Student team members will be on hand to show off their projects and answer questions including Sooner Racing, Baja Off-Road, Sooner Powered Vehicle and the Naval Electric Drag Boat, to name a few. By Tara Malone The ExxonMobil Lawrence G . Rawl Engineering Practice Facility may only have opened earlier this year, but this state-of-the-art structure is already playing a key role in the lives of University of Oklahoma engineering students. Named for former Exxon chairman Lawrence G. Rawl, the building features five first-floor practice bays that allow students to gain hands-on experience in engineering. Four of the bays are open to the second floor. One of the one-story bays is designed to provide students with an enclosed space for projec...