Month: October 2017

Leave a comment Posted on by Margaret Cross Alumni, AME Friends and Family

Sooner Rover Team Thousands Strong Campaign

 

The Sooner Rover Team Thousands Strong campaign launched in October and ends November 10, 2017. The team has a goal of raising $10,000, with “giving levels” starting from as low as $5.00. With 10 days left, the team could use the generous help of our alumni and AME friends!

To donate to the Sooner Rover Team Thousands Strong Campaign, click here.

Our Team

The Sooner Rover Team was founded in the Fall semester of 2015 by a small group of students that were interested in space and robotics who saw a very successful competition year, bringing home the highest score the NASA RASC-AL Robo Ops Competition has ever seen! Since then, the team has grown to more than 60 students who are eager to manufacture a competition ready rover. We will be taking on the same competition as last year: The University Rover Challenge! Among the students on the team over 10 majors are represented including Aerospace, Computer, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Geology/Geophysics, Mathematics, and Astrophysics.

Our Need

We need your support! Let’s start off by saying that $10,000 is a very beginning goal for us and we are aiming to raise at least 15,000!! Last year, the team raised over $17,000 with the help of supporters like you. This year, the University Rover Challenge aims to once again test the bounds of our team. This is an exciting task for the Sooner Rover Team and we can’t wait to overcome the new challenges set before us. We ask for your support to help us achieve success, once again, for our team and for our University. We promise, as a team, that your contributions will be used to bring us closer to our final product and are extremely grateful for each and every act of support! BOOMER SOONER!

Our Rover

The Sooner Rover is based off of a Russian design concept (the Marsokhad) and this will be the third year we compete with this design. We believe it was our take on this design, along with a unique control system, that has set us apart. We plan to keep the best of what we had last year and improve in every area that we can. This year’s rover will also need on board equipment to run scientific analysis that will determine characteristics such as soil humidity and subsurface temperature. These improvements, however, will require better parts and cost more money.

Our Competition

The Sooner Rover Team will be competing in the 2018 University Rover Challenge from May 31st – June 2nd. The competition will be held at the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) near Hanksville, Utah. Teams will face a variety of obstacles and are required to be completely untethered (wireless) and controlled from a remote location along with navigating terrain challenges, autonomous traversal, science caching, retrieval and delivery tasks, and more. Only with your support can we bring home a victory!

Leave a comment Posted on by Margaret Cross Alumni, AME Friends and Family

Sooner Off-Road Thousands Strong Campaign

UPDATE:

Thank you to everyone who donated to the Sooner Off-Road team Thousands Strong campaign! The team ended their successful campaign on November 3, 2017 with 127% of their goal reached, a total of $6,385 raised.

The Sooner Off-Road team launched their Thousands Strong campaign in October and the campaign ends November 3, 2017. The team has a goal of $5,000, with various levels of donation starting from $5.00. Every little bit counts!

To donate to the project, click here. To learn more about the project, please read further.

Our Project

The project for Sooner Off-Road in the 2017-2018 Baja SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) Competition Season is to design and manufacture a brand new mini baja car for the Baja SAE competition in late May 2018. We will compete against hundreds of schools across the world in a 3-day competition that includes a design and sales presentation and a multitude of tests including static testing, dynamic testing, and a four-hour long endurance race.

Impact of Our Project

This project provides students with the opportunity to get real-world engineering experience and to apply the knowledge they learn in the classroom to a project that is all their own. We also have a community outreach program to promote STEM learning in elementary schools. We do this by helping these students once a week with a project such as building a car powered by a fuel cell. We plan on using any funds we raise to pay for materials needed to build the vehicle and components that we are unable to build ourselves. We also plan to use funding to pay for the research and software needed to build our vehicle.

Please Share

It would be very helpful if you could share our website with your friends, family and colleagues.

Thank You

Our project is only possible with your generous donations! Your support provides us with the unique opportunity to thrive in our learning experience.

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Mentored Research Fund Awarded to Five Undergrads

mentored-research-fellowship-ame-2017

From Left to Right: Samuel Jett, Devin Laurence, Octavio Serrano, McKenzie Makovec, Dr. Chung-Hao Lee, Robert Kunkel

The Mentored Research Fellowship (MRF) award, sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research (O.U.R.), was given to five of Dr. Chung-Hao Lee’s undergraduate students. Each award is in the amount of $1000 for conducting undergraduate research projects in the Biomechanics and Biomaterials Design lab (BBDL).

The awardees are chosen based on the intellectual merit of the student’s submitted proposal (research project). The five students awarded from Dr. Lee’s research group are:

  • Devin Laurence (ME Senior under accelerated BS/MS program)
  • Robert Kunkel  (ME Senior under accelerated BS/MS program)
  • Samuel Jett  (ME Senior under accelerated BS/MS program)
  • Octavio Serrano  (ME Senior)
  • McKenzie Makovec  (ChemE Senior)

Dr. Lee’s BBDL research lab focuses on the following research areas:

  • Multiscale Biomechanical Modeling of the Cardiovascular Systems – Heart Valves
  • Characterization of Structural and Mechanical Properties of Soft Biological Tissues
  • Patient-Specific Modeling for Improved Diagnosis and Prophylactic Disease Management
  • Cell Mechanics and Mechanobiology Linking with Collagen Biosynthesis and Tissue Growth & Remodeling (G&R)
  • Advanced Finite Element and Meshfree Methods for Image-Based Computational Biomechanics

The following profiles expand on each award winner’s current research projects and backgrounds:

devin-laurence-profile-pic-description-239dwwyrobert-kunkel-profile-pic-description-13z62dosamuel-jett-profile-pic-description-1twi5hdoctavio-serrano-profile-pic-description-25foqwdmckenzie-makovec-profile-pic-description

According to the MRF website, the Mentored Research Fellowship is a program to cultivate and support student-mentor relationships while working on a research or creative project. This is part of the Office of Undergraduate Research’s commitment to empowering students’ exploration. MRF is open to all University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus undergraduate students.

Congratulations!