Dr. Saleh Keshawarz Leads Workshop Held in Laos

 

 

CETA faculty crosses national borders to create relationships with students, in order to share their knowledge with the world.

Dr. Saleh Keshawarz, P.E., Professor and Chair of the Civil, Environmental, and Biomedical Engineering Department, led a team of Afghan Graduate Students at the Asian Institute of Technology during a workshop held in the headquarters of the Mekong River Commission, Vientiane, Laos. 

The workshop was entitled: Transboundary Water Issues of Mekong River. Dr. Keshawarz led the discussion in the workshop in addition to giving two presentations. One presentation was on “Afghanistan Water Sharing Agreements with Neighbors” and the other was on “Economic Collaboration involving water Resources in Central Asia, Background and Future Prospects.” 

Acoustical Society of America’s 2017 Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education Awarded.

 

 

Congratulations to Dr. Bob Celmer ‘78, Program Director of CETA’s Acoustical Engineering programs, who has been selected to receive the Acoustical Society of America’s 2017 Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education!

The Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education was established in 2003 from a generous gift made to the Acoustical Society Foundation by Dr. Thomas D. Rossing to recognize an individual who has made significant contributions toward furthering acoustics education through distinguished teaching, creation of educational materials, textbook writing and other activities.

The Prize will be presented to Professor Celmer during the Plenary Session of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) fall 2017 meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, in December 2017. At that meeting, Professor Celmer will deliver the “Rossing Prize Lecture” in a session sponsored by the Committee on Education in Acoustics. He was named a Fellow of ASA in 2014.

The University of Hartford has the only ABET-accredited undergraduate B.S.E. Acoustical Engineering and Music degree. Professor Celmer is the Program Director of the program, which requires students to have both the math and science background, as well as successfully pass the Hartt entrance requirements, including an audition.

Congratulations again, to Dr. Bob Celmer!

CETA Student Success Stories

University of Hartford and CETA students are striving for success each day.  Here are just 2 of our most recent CETA success stories:

Sara Huelsman '17, College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture: 

Sara's future is taking flight as she begins her journey toward a career in aeroacoustics. The aerospace engineering major with an acoustics concentration won a NASA summer internship funded by the NASA Connecticut Space Grant Consortium. She will be heading to Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., to research the impact of aircraft noise, and then to Georgia Tech, to pursue her master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

Sara was originally interested in restoring the acoustics in historical theatres, until a course in fluid mechanics captured her interest. With plans to obtain her PhD in aerospace engineering, Sara intends to focus on noise control engineering within the aerospace industry.

Lucas "Luke" Shearer: College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture:

“If there’s a challenging environment, that’s what I’m drawn too,” says Lucas Shearer, ’17 of Parker, Colo., This statement couldn’t be truer when you consider where the marine has been and where his future is taking him. He recently secured his second summer internship at NASA and is headed to the University of Texas in the fall to pursue a Master’s in mechanical engineering and acoustics.

After interning in 2016 in the Structural Acoustics Branch at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., Lucas applied and landed a 2017 internship at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

A mechanical engineering student with a concentration in acoustics within the University of Hartford’s College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA), and a drummer since the age of 10, Lucas served four years as a U.S. Marine Corp. sergeant, and was a percussionist in “The Commandant’s Own,” The United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps.

UH website - 7/10/17

Two UHart Professors and Three Students are Working and Studying at NASA this Summer

Students and faculty soaring to new heights at NASA

 

Wesaam Lepak '18 at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio

Mechanical Engineering major Wesaam Lepak ’18 knows he’s achieved what many only dream of—landing an internship with NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). He is spending the summer working on a space shuttle system that, in the next two decades, may launch humans to the moon, asteroids, and Mars.

“NASA has been a dream of mine for a while,” says Wesaam, a Washington D.C. native who cultivated his affinity for faraway places while living in Brazil and Qatar during elementary school and Germany and Sweden in high school. “NASA has some of the best engineers and scientists in the world, and my goal is to be part of that group,” Wesaam says with confidence.

His summer responsibilities in the Structural Dynamics Laboratory at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, take advantage of his concentration in acoustics, and include working with aerospace engineers to analyze the effects sound waves have on a space launch. “I’ve always found math and science interesting because it affects the world, and I also have a passion for music, which is where studying acoustics come in,” he shares.

Recent graduate Sara Huelsman ’17, headed back to her home state of California this summer to intern in the Aeromechanics branch of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, and Lucas Shearer ’17, a former marine is doing his second NASA internship at the Fluid Dynamics branch of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Both majored in mechanical engineering with an acoustics concentration in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture (CETA) and both are working on sound measurement projects as their assignments this summer.

Professor of Mechanical Engineering Ivana Milanovic is also in Cleveland this summer with Wesaam. She was awarded a remarkable sixth NASA faculty fellowship award to work this summer. Also in Cleveland is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Paul Slaboch, who secured his second NASA faculty fellowship. Milanovic says working for NASA isn’t an impossible dream.

“While NASA internships are notoriously competitive for students to secure, the structure of UHart’s mechanical engineering and acoustics programs equips our future engineers with skills that are currently of great interest to NASA.”
 

These skills include the ability to engineer and analyze materials to optimize how sound is absorbed and transmitted. “Understanding acoustics and vibrations is critical to the success of a space mission, because as sound waves travel through the space shuttle, they have the ability to physically damage mission-critical components like the electrical and avionics systems,” explains Wesaam.

While Wesaam’s ultimate focus is on space exploration, he’s learned that NASA’s research extends beyond there. “Every aircraft in the U.S. has NASA-developed technology on board, so researching new ways to control jet engine noise on airplanes, especially when they take off and land, is part of what they do,” he says.

In fact, his time at NASA with professors Milanovic and Slaboch has included a preview of their research on reducing the noise level of jet engines to determine if there is a renewed future of commercial supersonic jets. (Click here to learn more about their faculty research.)

Wesaam says that his favorite part of the internship “is hearing all about the exciting research on cutting-edge technology that is going on around me and the idea that I could play a role in sending humans to Mars.”

UH Website - 7/6/17