April 2015 ABe-Notes
ABE Represented Well in Student Soybean Innovation Competition
Author: | Micky Creech |
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Each year for the last twenty-one, ISA has sponsored this program which encourages student teams to come up with new and innovative ways to use soybeans in novel products. The winning team receives $20,000 with the runner-up earning $10,000.
This year, student teams produced prototypes for products such as whitening strips for your teeth to air filters for engines and many original products in-between. For a complete listing of this year’s entries, students and advisors visit the web page at - https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/Academics/Competitions/2015_all_teams.
ABE student Evan Anderson, was part of this year’s winning team, Soy Sniffs, and ABE student Levi Jackson was a member of Soycotta Pots the runner-up winner. Other ABE students who successfully finished the competition and earned a GoPro camera for their efforts were; Cody Spoolstra (Soy White Natural Dental Strips), Xueqi Huang and Zhanxuan Liu (eco-friendly correction fluid), Abisoye Adebayo and Xi Wu (SoyCAP filter), and Alexis Laureano (Soy Six-Pack).
Many ABE faculty also served a large role in the competition success. The ABE faculty who advised teams were; Michael Ladisch, Teresa Carvajal, Bernie Engel, Richard Stroshine and Ganesan Narsimhan. A big Thank You to these faculty advisors. For a list of all faculty advisors for this year’s competition visit the competition web page at - https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/Academics/Competitions/advisor_thanks.
For further information about the competition, past winners and products, visit the web page at - https://engineering.purdue.edu/ABE/Academics/Competitions/index_html.
International SWAT Model Workshops Held in ADM Building
Author: | Dr. Jane Frankenberger |
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People came from as far as Saudi Arabia to attend workshops led by Dr. Raghavan Srinivasan during the week leading up to his recognition as a Distinguished Agricultural Alumnus. In addition to 25 attendees from across the U.S. and internationally, 29 Purdue graduate students, post-docs, staff, and faculty learned to better use the SWAT model for watershed research. The ADM building proved to be an excellent location for the four days, with 35 people comfortably using their computers. Dr. Srinivasan has presented more than 100 SWAT workshops around the world in 30 countries on five continents, and now Purdue Agricultural and Biological Engineering joins the distinguished list of host locations.
April 2015 Maha Fluid Power Center News
Author: | Meike Ernst |
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Maha Graduates
On March 9th, Paul Kalbfleisch defended his master’s thesis focusing on valve plate design in axial piston machines. His presentation is entitled “Computational Valve Plate Design,” and focuses on the work he has done in implementing an optimization scheme for the design of axial piston pump’s valve plate. Optimizing the design of the valve plate allows for the reduction of the pump’s vibrations, flow ripples, control effort, and internal leakages. Optimizing these performance parameters of the pump will create a quieter, more stable, and more energy efficient machine. There have been students at Maha in the past working on this research, but their algorithms required a significant amount of human involvement which significantly slowed down the optimization process. Paul has programmed his design knowledge into an algorithm that is now fully automated and parallelized on many computers. The design process now requires 2 days as opposed to months with previous methodologies. Congratulations Paul!
New Faces at Maha
The Maha team is proud to welcome two new visiting scholars to the team: Francisco Franco Arellano Gonzalez and Julio Cesar Gachuzo Elias will be doing research under the direction of Dr. Vacca.
April 2015 - Undergraduate News
One current and one future ABE student won awards in the Soy Innovation Competition! Evan Anderson, along with his brother Sean (Forestry), and Sara Richert (formerly ABE, now COM) placed last year with soy-based boot polish and won this year's event with Soy Sniffs (photo on left), a soy-based air freshener. Levi Jackson, currently in FYE and future BE student, won the runner-up prize with his team members Tyler Allen and Chelsea Sullivan for a biodegradable flower pot (photo on right).
Mark Moehling (ENRE 2010) named to DiscoverE New Faces of Engineering
Mark, 26, is the engineer for a unique partnership between NRCS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Mark and a USFWS Biologist work together on projects that provide wildlife benefits on agricultural and other private lands. Recently, his design work has been focused on the creation and restoration of livestock water ponds that have habitat value for the California Red Legged Frog and California Tiger Salamander. He is a supporter of Gift of Water®, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing filtered and clean drinking water to third world communities.
Raghavan Srinivasan (PhD '92) named Distinguished Agriculture Alumnus
Event Date: | April 3, 2015 |
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Eight educators, executives, and researchers received 2015 Distinguished Agriculture Alumni (DAA) Awards, the College of Agriculture's top honor. The 2015 class brings to 208 the number of alumni who have received the award since it was created in 1992. "As with all previous recipients, the new inductees are terrific examples of what Purdue Agriculture produces every year - farmers, scientists, educators, entrepreneurs, and business executives who become leaders in their fields," said Dean Jay Akridge. "We are very proud of them and what they have accomplished to this point in their careers. And, we are even more excited about what they will yet accomplish."
The Department of Agricultural Engineering is delighted to have Dr. Raghavan Srinivasan included in the Class of 2015. Recently, a journal publication ranked Srinivasan has having the second-greatest impact on nonpoint source pollution modeling in the past 20 years. The only person who has had a greater impact in that period was Jeff Arnold (PhD '92), primary developer of SWAT, who was named a Purdue Distinguished Agriculture Alumnus in 2008. Dr. Bernie Engel was cited in the same article as being in the top 10, and Dr. Indrajeet Chaubey in the top 25. Pictured below (left to right): Dr. Bernie Engel, Dr. Raghavan Srinivasan, Dr. Indrajeet Chaubey, and Dr. Jeff Arnold.
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