In a Nutshell: Buckeye Engineering briefs

Posted: 

Buckeye Engineering issue 28 news briefs

Quenching water needs in Gambia

Smiling students and villagers pose for a picture while wearing the same colorful clothing.

In the tight-knit village of Njau, Gambia, water shortages during the dry season leave residents without water to drink or irrigate their crops for days. The community of 2,000—mostly women and children—often struggle to get adequate nutrition and raise crops to sell.

Ohio State’s Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter partnered with village leaders to design and install a solar-powered irrigation system in the community garden. By providing sustainable water access, the Buckeyes hope to extend Njau’s growing season by two months and increase their self-sufficiency.

“A lot of these women really struggle with making ends meet,” said EWB President Maggie Miles ’20, an industrial and systems engineering major. Read the full story.

College recognizes elite alumni

Awardees pose with Dean Williams at the Alumni Awards
Honorees at the 22nd Annual Excellence in Engineering and Architecture Alumni Awards

A renowned roboticist, a professor who is revolutionizing drug delivery, a former Olympian, and an oil and gas executive who advanced energy production are among the 22 alumni who were honored at the 22nd Annual Excellence in Engineering and Architecture Alumni Awards on October 4, 2019.

The annual celebration recognizes exceptional alumni from across the College of Engineering who have achieved distinction in their fields or through their extraordinary service contributions since graduating from The Ohio State University. Meet the honorees.

Grad helps university flex space research muscles

Wilson Flores is one of several men working in a lab.
Wilson Flores works in a lab.

If you’re a Buckeyes fan, you know Wilson Flores. Or at least you’ve seen him. The recent engineering grad is the focus of The Ohio State University television commercial that airs during football and basketball games. And if you’ve watched the commercial, you will likely remember it has something to do with NASA.

In December, in the Chihuahuan Desert of west Texas, Flores watched that something launch into space. An interdisciplinary Ohio State experiment funded by NASA to study muscle atrophy in space was among dozens of research and outreach payloads stowed aboard Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard rocket.

“Working on a project that could help astronauts stay in space longer has been very exciting,” Flores said. Read the full story.

More trees please

A vista of green trees with smoke spewing from a smokestack in the distance.
Adding plants and trees to the landscapes near factories and other pollution sources could reduce air pollution by an average of 27 percent, new research suggests. The study shows that plants, not technologies, may also be cheaper options for cleaning the air near a number of industrial sites, roadways, power plants, commercial boilers and oil and gas drilling sites.

In fact, researchers found that in 75 percent of the counties analyzed, it was cheaper to use plants to mitigate air pollution than it was to add technological interventions—like smokestack scrubbers—to the sources of pollution.

“The fact is that traditionally, especially as engineers, we don’t think about nature; we just focus on putting technology into everything,” said Bhavik Bakshi, lead author of the study and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at The Ohio State University.

“And so, one key finding is that we need to start looking at nature and learning from it and respecting it. There are win-win opportunities if we do—opportunities that are potentially cheaper and better environmentally.” Read the full story.