From sunny SoCal to snowy North Carolina
(NAE Grand Challenges Summit - Day 1)
Hello from Durham, North Carolina!
It's been awhile since I've updated this blog - but I promise it's not because I picked up and left my beautiful sunny California. The past few weeks have included a variety of midterm-studying, job-hunting, event-planning, and homework-trying that have ended in too little sleep and too much junk food. But this weekend I am taking a break from it all to travel to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Summit on the Grand Challenges of Engineering at Duke University.
A few posts back, I wrote about how my fellow Illumin editors and myself entered a contest hosted by the NAE Summit that required us to write a 1000 word essay and create a 3 minute video addressing one of the 14 grand challenges. After slaving away for two weeks to get our entries in, Viterbi awarded us with something completely worth the effort: an all-expense paid trip to Durham to attend the Duke-Olin-USC sponsored Summit on the Grand Challenges.
And so here I am, sitting in the Marriot Courtyard as snow falls on the rooftops outside. Today was the Preconference Student Day, which three of the Illumin editors and myself attended. It kicked off with a great keynote speech from Moira Gunn, the host of NPR's TechNation and a former NASA engineer. Throughout the day, we met a variety of engineers, most of them from Olin and Duke, working with them to design a windmill blade from Popsicle sticks, a deck of cards, and a small motor, and competing in a trivia game about the Grand Challenges. The evening comprised of several mixers with industry and academia members. So far, it's been a fun and welcoming experience!
The best part? One of the editors, Dennis, won the top prize in the design competition, which happened to be an awesome three-foot long Nerf gun that shoots darts about 35 feet (which we of course tested in the hotel hallway). And seeing that we're all from USC, we of course ran outside to play in the snow. That is, until it got so cold we couldn't bare it any longer ... and yes, that lasted less than 10 minutes.
Stay tuned for updates from tomorrow - the first day of the conference!
McDonalds Hazelnut Iced Coffee and Fries ...
... makes homework nights slightly more tolerable. It's 11:28 pm, and I guarantee that at least 3/4 of our BME 402 class is currenlty attempting to finish our latest assignment for our Neural Communications class. And of course, MATLAB is no one's friend at the moment - a fact that you'll find anytime you're trying to complete a homework assignment at the last minute. But all of us are trudging through, trying to map out n, h, m, and I on a single plot to mimic an action potential, which probably makes as much sense to you as it does to me.
Of course, my procrastination was entirely my fault, but entirely worth it. This Sunday, a friend and I decided to try out USC's program with ZipCar and take a trip to Santa Monica for the day. ZipCar is a cool service on campus that allows students to essentially rent a car for an hourly few for a designated time - making transportation around the city effortless. We decided to rent out a MINI Cooper and ride into 3rd Street Promenade in style.
After wandering through the shops for a few hours, we ended our relaxing day at The Counter, this awesome joint that lets you create your own burger with some of the craziest (and tastiest) toppings around. Add in the greasy fries with three different sauces, and you've got a meal around $10 fit for college life. Too bad I will have to procrastinate on working off those greasy pounds at the gym ...
A 1 in 20 chance at winning 15 grand?
For the past few weeks, my fellow editors of Illumin magazine (http://illumin.usc.edu) and I put aside our editorial responsibilities to each submit an entry into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges Contest. The NAE published 14 "Grand Challenges of Engineering" on their website about five months ago, asking website visitors to vote on what they believe is the most pressing challenge facing the engineers today - you can check it out here. In addition, they asked college students to submit a 1000 word essay and a short 2-3 minute video on one of the topics, addressing what they believed was the best solution.
So, for the past few weeks, we've been slaving away at these essays and videos, trying to crank out the best entry we possibly can in time for the deadline. After finally ending our stress, tears, and frustration in finishing our videos and articles, we were happy to find that a few more than 20 submissions had been made - for a grand prize of $15,000! Pretty good chances, eh?
If you want to check out all the submissions, search for "engineeringchallenge" on YouTube. There, you can find the 2-3 minute amateur videos submitted by college kids from around the nation. In particular, check out USC's submissions:
Meredith Hankins, Chemical Sequestration: http://youtube.com/watch?v=NkA6M-mBX2Y
Ilya Golosker, Nuclear Energy: http://youtube.com/watch?v=oZDmU1xiAXw
Andrew Bagwell, Health Informatics: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KuUFjftO8aw
Dennis Krouse, Engineering Better Medicines: http://youtube.com/watch?v=wsJH5LGu3lg
Me, Providing Access to Clean Water: http://youtube.com/watch?v=WwQeb8WSyu4
And to top off the potential at a 3/20 chance at winning a nice chunk of money (First Place: $15,000, Second Place: $10,000, Third Place: $5,000), Viterbi is actually going to sponsor each of us to travel out to Duke for the Grand Challenges Summit in March! We'll get to check out the other entries, present a poster on our work, and actually talk to engineers, politicians, and other students about the future of each Challenge and potential solutions.
No matter what kind of engineering you're looking into studying, definitely check out the Grand Challenges if you can - it's a great read for any engineer looking to truly make this world a better place.
Engineering World Health
For those of you future biomedical engineers looking to make a difference, I got good news: Viterbi has finally established the first USC chapter of Engineering World Health.
EWH is a national organization based out of Duke whose mission is to restore medical equipment in hospitals around the world. I came across this club a few years back, when I was looking for some way to use whatever biomedical skills I had learned as an undergrad to help people in developing countries. Google introduced me to the EWH Summer Institute, in which a group of students travel to either Costa Rica or Tanzania to learn Spanish or Swahili and basic medical equipment repair. They then use their skills to work in local hospitals and help restore the quality of medical instruments and teach local doctors how to use them.
But that's not all EWH does. College chapters can contribute to the cause by hosting build sessions to design, build, or repair medical equipment for shipment to the developing world. The organization gives engineers a chance to gets their hands on a cause and work with people who are traveling back and forth to hospitals miles away.
After getting back from Ireland, I was thrilled to hear that a few graduate and undergraduate students working with Dr. Loeb had also heard of the organization and decided to start a chapter. At the moment, we are in the early stages: gathering support, funding, and project ideas for our first few meetings. We're hoping to get everything up and rolling for this Fall so members can start doing build sessions on a regular basis.
Stay tuned for more info on the club and our website - first meeting is next Wednesday, February 4, at 6 pm!
Yes, there are soccer fans in America
On Saturday night, my family and I trekked out to Carson, California, to watch yet another soccer match at the new Home Depot Center. Compared to USC games at the Colliseum, where almost 100,000 fans pack the stadium wearing cardinal and gold, soccer matches at the Home Depot Center are bit more low-key: of the 27,000 seats in the stands, only 9,000 were filled for the national friendly between the US and Sweden.
Of course, with empty seats spattered around, it was perfect for everyone who did show up. We sat right behind the net, roughly five rows up, with a perfect view of the third and best goal of the game, leading the US to defeat Sweden 3-2. It was one of the best games I've been to, with two well-matched teams and the chance to see some of the new team players up close:
Of course, if you ask anyone in Europe, they'd be surprised that anyone showed up at all. You can tell the 9,000 fans who were cheering on the US on Saturday were regulars at the stadium - security lines flew by, almost everyone had some kind of soccer paraphanilia on, and the crowd always new the right cheers to scream out. It's a bit sad knowing that arguably the most popular sport in the world is not really considered worth many people's time in America ...
Doesn't stop my family and me, though. Every weekend, you can catch the Premier League games on TV in the morning and drive down to catch a Galaxy or international match for under $30 at the Home Depot Center. And of course, our USC Womens National Championship team is always fun to watch on campus!
And for those of you wanting to convert, check out the World Cup Qualifier on ESPN 2 on Feb 11 between US and Mexico!
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