2017 National Engineers Week Roundup
Published Feb 20, 2017
The new year has hardly begun, but our researchers have already made plenty of headlines. In honor of National Engineers Week, we’ve rounded up some of our most popular engineering stories from 2017.
Above, Ph.D. mechanical engineering candidate Alexis Noel holds up the subject of her first published paper, which explains why frog tongues are sticky. The paper has received worldwide media attention since its release.
Creating the Next Manufacturing Solution ... from Frog Spit
New research on frog tongue saliva shows that the stickiness is caused by a unique reversible saliva in combination with a super soft tongue. Why spend time studying frog saliva? These findings could help engineers design reversible adhesives at high speed.
Creating Positive Economic Impacts
Georgia Tech’s colleges of engineering, computing, and business recently announced the Online Master of Science in Analytics Degree. The new degree offers online students a top-10-ranked degree program for a tuition rate of less than $10,000.
Georgia Tech Launches Online Master of Science in Analytics Program
Creating the Next Renewable Energy
When is an internal combustion engine not an internal combustion engine? When it’s been transformed into a modular reforming reactor. This technology could produce hydrogen wherever natural gas is available, potentially resolving one of the major challenges with the hydrogen economy.
Four-Stroke Engine Cycle Produces Hydrogen from Methane
Creating New Technologies that Save Resources in Energy Production and Use
Chemical separation processes account for as much as 15 percent of the world’s total energy consumption. Georgia Tech engineers are developing next-generation, molecularly selective synthetic membranes that could dramatically reduce that number, as well as CO2 emissions.
Advanced Materials Power Next-Generation Molecular Separations
Creating New Levels of Security and Defense
Georgia Tech engineers launched a simulated attack on a water treatment plant to highlight vulnerabilities in the control systems used to operate industrial facilities. Now here’s the good news: the same engineers have tactics for protecting these vulnerable public systems.
Ransomware Attack Shows Vulnerability of Industrial Controls
Creating a Better Quality of Life
Mechanical engineers are using 3-D printers to help cardiologists care for patients diagnosed with heart valve disease. Printing exact models of individual patients’ heart valves may soon be used to increase the success of valve replacement surgery.
Transforming Health Care Delivery
A humanoid bot called Darwin shows how aspects of nursing and child care might be mechanized. A robot might not replace a physical therapist, but engineers say it could help provide routine direction and encouragement that would normally be too expensive to offer to everyone.