The Bangor Daily News carried an article about a surprise graduation ceremony held at Eastern Maine Medical Center Wednesday for engineering major Jackie Blanchard of Corinth, who is undergoing treatment for cancer. UMaine President Paul Ferguson, College of Engineering Dean Dana Humphrey, former Gov. John Baldacci, UMaine women’s basketball coach Richard Barron and dozens of friends, family and supporters attended. Blanchard received a degree in civil engineering and was inducted into engineering’s Francis Crowe Society. She also managed the women’s basketball team.
The Classified Employees Advisory Council and the Professional Employees Advisory Council have announced the University of Maine’s outstanding employees of the year. (more…)
The University of Maine’s ADVANCE Rising Tide Center will host a conference on Monday, May 14, to give female faculty in engineering, mathematics, technology and the physical, biological, natural and social sciences an opportunity to meet and discuss strategies to support professional achievement. (more…)
The U.S. Green Building Council has awarded the University of Maine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center the LEED Gold certification for its newly constructed Offshore Wind Laboratory. This is the first LEED Gold-certified building on the UMaine campus. (more…)
The U.S. military is very interested in alternative fuels — in particular, the wood-based biofuels being researched and produced at the University of Maine. Three methods, or pathways, to producing biofuel for use in military jets are being explored by UMaine chemical and biological engineers affiliated with the university’s Forest Bioproducts Research Institute (FBRI). The pathways all aim to produce what are known as drop-in fuels — those that can be used easily in a number of fuel tanks and pipelines.
In this video, UMaine faculty and student researchers demonstrate and discuss their major breakthrough in wood-based biofuels. The discovery could be an important key in making biofuels a viable alternative to traditional fuels.
University of Maine mechanical engineering professor Mick Peterson spent the weekend at the Churchill Downs racetrack in Kentucky consulting with Kentucky Derby race managers and testing the status of the track in the days and hours before the 138th running of the world-famous horse race. Peterson, who is “widely considered the world’s foremost racing surfaces researcher,” according to Churchill Downs Incorporated, has worked with race organizers for the last three years conducting engineering analysis and tests of Churchill Downs’ racing surfaces for safety and consistency. Peterson was also interviewed for a profile of the retiring track superintendent published in the Courier-Journal newspaper of Louisville, Ky.
The Portland Press Herald carried a story about the UMaine student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, whose members recently designed and installed a new sewage and wastewater disposal system in a small rural village in Honduras. Students have been volunteering over spring and winter breaks on the project for several years.
Several media outlets covered last Friday’s Maine Wind Blade and Windstorm Challenges, which were held in UMaine’s New Balance Student Recreation and Fitness Center. The Bangor Daily News interviewed several students who participated in the challenges, which featured competitions for middle and high school students to design, build, implement and test wind power technology components similar to those used in a UMaine research program in deepwater and offshore wind power. Bangor TV station WABI interviewed Habib Dagher, director of UMaine’s Advanced Structures and Composites Center, who said he saw among the students’ wind blade and turbines some designs he had never thought about. The North American Windpower website also had a report on the events.
Three engineers and a biochemist are the recipients of the top annual faculty awards at the University of Maine, which will be presented May 4 as part of the Academic Recognition Convocation. (more…)
Several of the top-ranked University of Maine College of Engineering student-built kinetic sculptures demonstrated this week on campus are being moved to a variety of locations throughout Maine, including the Maine Discovery Museum in Bangor, to illustrate for young people the artistic and practical nature of kinetic machines and engineering. (more…)
