Congrats to two ME-affiliated teams of entrepreneurs, who won big at the International Business Model Competition in Utah! FlykeART (with Juan Ramirez) reimagines the airline serving cart, and Global Sign (with Heya Kaakeh) brings sign language interpretation to educational videos.

Few competitions encourage student learning like the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Collegiate Design Series. The Formula SAE (FSAE) competition challenges college students from all over the world to design and build a small racecar within one school year. The goal is to create an easily-reproducible, nonprofessional weekend autocross racecar prototype that costs about $30,000. The SAE’s various restrictions on the open wheel, open cockpit concept car are meant to inspire creativity among the teams. The best designs should be low cost, easily maintained, reliable, and -- of course -- fast.

Congratulations to Arezoo Ardekani, honored with an Early Career Research Award from Purdue Engineering! Prof. Ardekani studies complex fluid dynamics, such as microbes flowing through the human body, or plankton through the oceans.

In just its second year, the Purdue Energetics Research Center has already started several companies, and hosted a summit of international experts on energetic materials.

We are pleased to announce that Eckhard Groll will become the new head of the School of Mechanical Engineering. He will take over for Anil Bajaj on July 1.

NASA has selected Purdue to host the Resilient ExtraTerrestrial Habitats institute, dedicated to designing and operating habitats on the Moon, Mars, and deep space. Shirley Dyke, professor of mechanical engineering, will lead the $15 million institute.

Solid rocket fuel hasn't changed much since the 1960s -- until now. Adranos Energetics, started at Purdue's Zucrow Labs, just demonstrated a live flight test of their new propellant, and won an Army-sponsored competition over more than 350 other companies.

Here are the first undergraduates ever (freshmen!) to win the poster competition at the I2D Expo! Tae Hyung Kwon, Cody Kapeles, Linete Taina, and Eva Toscos showcased a project about wind farms in Peru, supervised by Luciano Castillo. The Shah Family Global Innovation Lab hosts the I2D Expo to bring engineering solutions to the developing world.