Shirts, Signups, and Sunshine - an 'SME Barbeque

In some parts of the world, January belongs to a season called "winter." (Yea, we don't know what it is either...) We thought we'd celebrate a beautiful January summer day by grilling cheap burgers and showing off our cool new t-shirts! Thanks to all who stopped by and supported us. (Check out the photos below!)



(Thursday, January 27th, 2011)

GBM#6 12/2/10

For our 6th and final general body meeting of the semester we had guest speaker Scott Lever who is the MERS mission manager from the Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mr. Lever spoke to us about the engineering and logistics behind the Mars Exploration Rover mission. Awesome 3D glasses were provided to view mind blowing photos actually taken from Mars!

All the officers and members of ASME@SDSU would like to thank Mr. Lever for coming all the way down to speak to us and give ASME its first 3-D general body meeting! What an wonderful way to close out such a successful semester!

Edwards Air Force Base/ NASA Dryden Tour 11/19/10

Our tour of the Edwards Air Force Base/ NASA Dryden was an awesome opportunity. From walking into a cargo plane, to cruising alongside planes on the runway, the experience was once in a lifetime. We got to see planes, helicopters, as well as unmanned aircrafts.

Thanks to Mr. Alec Dyatt and Mr. Thane Lundberg for making this amazing tour possible.

GBM #5 11/18/10

Our speaker for GBM #5 was Mr. Thane Lundberg, flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base. Mr. Lundberg spoke to us about his career path as well as the many opportunities available at Edwards Air Force Base.

All of the Officers and members of ASME @ SDSU would like to thank Mr. Thane Lundberg for coming down to speak to us. It's always a treat!

NAS North Island Tour 11/12/10

Our tour of Naval Air Station North Island, the birthplace of Naval Aviation, could not have taken place on a more beautiful day in Coronado. The manufacturing facilities and the composites and reverse engineering labs are just a couple of the the many things we saw during our visit.

Thanks to to our fellow ASME @ SDSU member, Mr. Khoa Nguyen for taking the time out to plan our tour and take us around the base!

GBM #4 11/4/10

For our fourth General Body Meeting James Powell, P.E. from Solar Turbines spoke to us about his experiences in gas turbine engineering as well as the incorporation of FEA analysis and material selection.

All of the Officers and members of ASME @ SDSU would like to greatly thank James Powell for taking time out of his busy schedule to come down and speak to us!

GBM #3 10/21/10

For the third general body meeting of the semester, Dr. Bryan Crane from Illumina Inc. came to talk to us about optomechanical and fluidic designs in the field of Genomics. He began by first explaining that Illumina Inc., is a leading developer of genetic sequencing technology whose products are revolutionizing the field of molecular medicine. Their breakthroughs in Genomics (aka the study of an organism's DNA sequence) are aiding in the early detection of diseases and providing improved treatments to cure these ailments.

Dr. Crane is a Senior Engineer whose primary duty is the development of the HiSEQ 2000 sequencing device. He explained how the optical and thermal/fluid systems within the device enable the machine to read and process over 3 Billion clusters of information from the human genome. This "sequencing by synthesis" technology allows the HiSEQ 2000 to deliver the industry's highest sequencing output at the fastest data generation rate.

All of the Officers and members of ASME@SDSU would like to greatly thank Dr. Crane for taking time out of his busy schedule to come down and provide us with such fascinating look into the field of genomics engineering!

GBM #2 10/7/10

Last Thursday we had our second general body meeting of the semester, and once again it was a another massive turnout!

Delicious pizza and drinks were served once again while the ASME Officers spoke about the upcoming Career Fair and SDSU Chiller plant factory tour. Then, Bjorn Johnson, Chief Scientist at Johnson Engineering Solutions, LLC came up to speak about the future of robotics and artificial intelligence. He showed us some of his work with swarm U.A.Vs (unmanned aerial vehicles) systems and the components and technologies that are required for their development. He then showed us cheap and effective ways to get started in robotics and A.I. research. Mr. Johnson recommended using the Parallax BOE-Bot as a good starting point for robotics and coding. Luckily, most mechanical engineering students at SDSU already have used one in some way or another, so we are all headed in the right direction!

The second general body meeting was a huge success. Many thanks and praise go out to Mr. Bjorn Johnson for being such an awesome guest speaker!

GBM#2: Bjorn Johnson to speak on Artificially Intelligent Robots

Next week we're having our second General Body Meeting of the semester. It will take place on Thursday, 10/7 at 12:30 pm in room E-423B. You can expect free food and a couple announcements, followed by guest speaker Bjorn Johnson.

Mr. Johnson graduated from SDSU with his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. in 2004 before continuing on to complete his M.S. in Computer Science. He is currently working towards his Ph.D. in Computer Science while also operating as Owner and Chief Scientist of his company, Johnson Engineering Solutions, LLC. Last time, Mr. Johnson spoke about the science and manufacturing process of semiconductors - this time, he will speak about robotics and artificial intelligence (AKA, more really cool stuff!).

Specifically, Mr. Johnson will address:

- State of the art progress towards AI-enhanced autonomous robots
- Requirements and components (ACO, Neural nets, Fuzzy logic) needed for a swarm system of UAVs
- A short intro to how one can get started with robotics and AI research pretty cheaply

So there you have it! Stop by for free food and leave with a full brain. We'll see you next week.

Career Networking Events in October

 
SDSU's Career Services Department has declared October to be STEM Month. To us engineering students, that means there are a ton of career networking events coming up very soon! Some of these big events will require you to RSVP online - and be sure you do, because they are going to fill up fast!

A quick listing of the big STEM Month events is given below. For more info, please see the Career Services Website or the associated flyers (Flyer 1, Flyer 2)

> WISE University Seminar and Engineering Learning Community Coffee Hour
Thurs, Oct-7th, SSE-1200, 9 am

> Graduate and Professional School Day
Thurs, Oct-14, Centennial Walkway, 10 am - 2 pm
 
> Careers in STEM Employer Exchange
Weds, Oct-20, Montezuma Hall, 11 am

> Speed Networking for the College of Engineering
Fri, Oct-22, Casa Real (Aztec Center), 10 am - 1 pm


> Engineering & Sciences Career Fair
Fri, Oct-29, Montezuma Hall, 10 am - 2 pm

> Mr. Hinkle's World Famous Resume Workshop*
Tues, Oct-19, E-423B, 11 am - 12 pm and 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm (same workshop twice)

* This event is actually being put on by ASME, just for you! This resume workshop, offered by Mr. Larry Hinkle, Assistant Dean of Engineering Student Affairs, is amazing. It is truly invaluable for any students who ever wish to get a job in engineering (hopefully all of you!). And because we believe this workshop is so important, we've tricked bribed convinced Mr. Hinkle to offer this workshop TWICE, in back-to-back sessions, so that students who might have class conflicts can now attend.

Two important notes about this event: 
1. You MUST bring a current copy of your resume

2. Any students who attend and improve their resume will be eligible to have their resume featured on our ASME Resume CD, which will be distributed to local engineering corporations this Winter. (Great opportunity for you!)

 As always, email us with your questions at sdsu.asme@gmail.com.

Chiller Plant Tour: October 12 and 15

For those who don't already know, SDSU's on-campus chilled water plant (aka, the Chiller) does the cooling work for almost 90% of the buildings on campus. If you've been to the west side of campus, you may have seen water vapor blowing from the big rectangular building next to West Commons.

We know you're all interested in touring this place, so meet us on Tuesday, 10/12 or Friday, 10/15 in front of the Engineering Building at 10:30 am, where we'll sign in and awkwardly congregate. Then we'll walk over together at 10:45. The tour will go from 11 am to 1 pm and will involve a lot of walking, so we've been advised to dress "comfortably." If you're interested, just show up! Or if you have questions, shoot us an email at sdsu.asme@gmail.com

Seektech Facility Tour!

For our first facility tour of the semester, we had the honor of visiting Seektech. Seektech is a local engineering-design and manufacturing firm that specializes in the production of utility detecting and video pipe inspection products. Our tour guide Ryan, who happens to also be a ME student at SDSU gave us a detailed look inside of his company. ASME members lucky enough to take the tour were able to witness the entire product development process; From initial designs created on SolidWorks, all the way to parts manufacturing and assembly.

The tour was a tremendous success and we are incredibly thankful to Seektech for letting us tour their amazing facility!

Fall Kickoff GBM Was a Huge Success!

We had our first general body meeting last Thursday, and there was a huge turnout!

Dr. Mehrabadi, our ME Department Chair came and spoke about some academic programs and course-related changes in the department, and handed out the new ME Information Guides (email us if you want one!). Next we went through a bunch of announcements, including upcoming events, design project teams, and open officer positions. Then we had an impromptu design competition to build the tallest structure that would support a 1-L water bottle using only popsicle sticks and a very limited supply of glue. Finally we had a raffle, and ended up giving away seven t-shirts and a wireless printer!

Agenda & Announcements:

Pics up from Taylor Guitar tour last spring...

Now that our blog is finally up, we can add pictures! Here are some from the Taylor Guitar tour we went on last spring. We're considering doing this again, so let us know if you want to go!