OU Engineering

Students (starting second from left) Diego Perez Avendano, Harrison Dean, Brandon Aparicio and Raymond Conner receive the 2021 Summer Bridge Award of Excellence at the closing ceremony. On left, is Chad Davis, ECE instructor, and far right,  Chris Dalton, AME associate professor. This summer, 48 incoming freshmen coming from Oklahoma, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas graduated from the AT&T Summer Bridge Program in the Gallogly College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. The four-week on-campus program was designed to prepare students entering an OU engineering program for the academic rigor of engineering coursework. Sponsored by AT&T and Dolese, students worked in teams to design and build miniature robotic vehicles. The students applied various skills and concepts of engineering to their designs. They also practiced effective communication, prioritization and presentation skills alongside teammates. After a month of complicated engin...

  GCoE has added a total of 18 new faculty to its schools, institutes, labs and centers for the 2021-22 school year.  “The Gallogly College of Engineering has made large strides in recruiting some of the best engineering minds to the University of Oklahoma,” said John Klier, dean of the Gallogly College of Engineering. “This school year marks one of our greatest efforts in that we hired 18 outstanding new faculty to add depth and breadth to research focus areas while at the same time enhancing the student experience.” The following join the School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering as assistant professors: Iman Ghamarian, Ph.D., most recently was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan. His expertise is in materials science and engineering with current research linking orientation microscopy to atom probe tomography data. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the Sharif University of Technology in Iran, a master’s degree from the University of North Texas a...

OU engineering professors Brian Grady and Daniel Resasco are recipients of the AIChE Fellowship, the highest grade of membership in the global organization with more than 60,000 members.  “Being named an AIChE Fellow is a great honor and I am pleased to see the contributions of both Dr. Grady and Dr. Resasco recognized,” said John Klier, dean of the Gallogly College of Engineering. “OU is pleased to have the only engineering faculty in Oklahoma receive this coveted fellowship for 2021.” Joining the OU faculty in 1995, Grady has played a key role in understanding how carbon nanotubes affect the properties of polymers. Carbon nanomaterials are used in polymers in automotive and electronic applications. Grady serves as the director of both the School of Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering and the Institute for Applied Surfactant Research at OU. He also serves on the steering committee at Chulalongkorn University’s College of Petroleum and Petrochemical Engineering in Thaila...

In June, the Sooner Racing Team (SRT) placed in the Top 10 at Formula SAE Nevada. Held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, 40 teams from across the globe took part with the University of Oklahoma finishing eighth. Nine OU students comprised this year’s winning team.  “This year was a big year for OU as it was the first time in many years that we placed in the Top 10,” said Mrinal Saha, aerospace and mechanical engineering professor who serves as SRT adviser.  “I’m extremely pleased with the Formula SAE results. This competition allows our students to use their knowledge to design and build formula-style race cars.”   Formula SAE is a design competitive sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The Sooner Racing Team was formed in 1994. Since then, the team has competed in every FSAE event since 1995 but 1998. To learn more about the Sooner Racing Team, email  soonerracingteam@ou.edu or visit sae.ou.edu . Photo: SRT d rivers for Formula SAE Nevada were OU studen...

In June, engineering students at the University of Oklahoma won first place at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) Auto-Nav challenge in Rochester, Michigan.   The students were part of OU’s Sooner Competitive Robotics team and they shared the excitement of winning the university’s first-ever IGVC competition. The Auto-Nav challenge entails a robot navigating a road course laid out in a parking lot, which involves staying in the lanes, avoiding traffic barrels and other obstacles, and pursuing GPS coordinates – all with no driver input. The OU students designed, fabricated and programmed their robot, the Aluminum Whale, entirely from scratch over a two-year period. The robot gets its funny name from their first drive test, in which the robot’s low ground clearance caused it to get “beached” anytime it wasn’t on flat pavement, says OU engineering alumnus Kevin Robb, of Aledo, Texas. Robb adds that with so many veteran teams competing, the OU team wasn’t sure they ...

At a summer camp at the University of Oklahoma, high school juniors and seniors learned how to create a Styrofoam support beam, build a Popsicle stick bridge and code a LabView robot.  They learned these engineering marvels and more during OU Engineering Days sponsored by Boeing, a day camp where students experience different engineering fields on the Norman campus. About 90 students from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas and Texas took part in the June event. Engineering Days provides rising juniors and seniors with a glimpse into college-level concepts in the diverse field of engineering. The classes are taught by faculty who bring real-world expertise into the classroom, says Dalton Brasington who oversees outreach and recruitment for the OU Gallogly College of Engineering. “Engineering Days exposes high school juniors and seniors to the wide world of engineering through exciting projects and dynamic learning environments. Each camp day focuses on a different discipline,” Brasington sa...

Michele Galizia, an assistant professor in the Gallogly College of Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, has received a 2021 National Science Foundation Early CAREER Development grant to continue his research focusing on membrane technology, a technique that separates molecules from mixtures by size and shape. About 10% of global energy consumption is devoted to these chemical separations and enhancing the energy efficiency of industrial separations is crucial to decreasing costs and controlling environmental pollution. The five-year grant – CAREER: Engineering polymers cohesive energy density and free volume for highly selective organic separations – begins Sept. 1 and has a  total anticipated award amount of $543,641. “This project will combine experimental and computational approaches to discover a new class of materials prepared by properly manipulating the structure of polymer membranes ,” Galizia said. “I am thankf...