2017 News
April 15, 2017
COE robotics teams are on a roll
CARBONDALE, Ill. – The College of Engineering’s robotics teams have been on a tear lately, winning big at two recent competitions.
In March, two of its robotics teams came home with the top spots after competing at the Midwest Robotics Design Competition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
April 14, 2017
Curiosity leads engineering alumna to the stars
Kids today will never know the struggle.
There once was a time when there was one phone in the house, either on a wall or sitting on a stand somewhere, and parents found it much easier to control when and how it was used.
But if you were a budding engineer with a drive to understand “how things worked,” there was always a work-around method to solve this problem. For Joan Higginbotham, overcoming the restricted access to the family phone was just the first of many challenges that would eventually lead her to a seat on a space shuttle.
April 13, 2017
Student learns important lessons in, out of the classroom
Higher education teaches many lessons, and not all of them have to do with a student’s major.
For Allison Dartt, coming to SIU and studying computer engineering was a natural choice. Having always done well in math and sciences courses, she was looking for a way to sharpen her critical thinking skills, and the College of Engineering was a perfect fit for the Clarksville, Tenn. native.
April 12, 2017
Grant funds research into electronic performance
An engineering researcher at Southern Illinois University Carbondale is working on new ways to develop a better understanding of processes that erode electronics performance -- right down to the atomic level -- in a bid to boost the reliability of such devices, as well as lengthen their lives and improve accuracy.
Shaikh Ahmed, professor of electrical and computer engineering, recently received a grant for almost $283,000 from the National Science Foundation to study and model how such devices fail and why. Ahmed’s work could lead to better, hardier electronic devices that are more impervious to the harsh effects of their environments, whatever those may be.
March 23, 2017
Robotics teams take top spots in Midwest contest
Two robotics teams at Southern Illinois University Carbondale came home with the top spots after competing at the Midwest Robotics Design Competition last weekend.
January 30, 2017
Sam Oltman: Hats Off To NASA
Seven-year-old Sam Oltman from Putnam, Illinois, looked down at what would become one of his most prized possessions. The baseball cap he held wasn’t from a game -- it was a gift from his visit to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida with his parents.