Jessica Traver (BSME '14, MSME '17) has been highlighted in Forbes "30 Under 30," a list highlighting pioneers and entrepreneurs under 30 years old.

The Purdue Drone Club hosted the first ever intercollegiate indoor drone races in January, with Ohio State and Illinois. Each race is an exhilarating 2 minutes, as the small quadcopters can fly at nearly 80 miles per hour. Pilots maneuver the drones while wearing goggles, receiving live wireless video from the drone's point of view -- so both pilots and spectators alike can feel like they are in the cockpit of the drone, dodging the obstacles of the course.

Purdue University is leading part of a national effort to reduce vehicle fuel consumption by 20 percent through automated systems that interconnect cars and trucks. Purdue leads a project focusing on Class 8 trucks (tractor-trailers), and will work with team members Cummins Inc., Peloton Technology, Peterbilt Motors Co., the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and ZF TRW.

As classes begin this semester, let's look at Purdue's sophomore-level design class, ME263. Students put their design and prototyping skills into practice immediately: inventing a new product, doing market research, building a prototype, and pitching the product in person. What will sophomores come up with this year?

For students pursuing careers in the pharmaceutical industry, it can be difficult to put theories and computer models into practice. At Purdue, they can actually operate a Continuous Tableting Line: a full downstream production plant creating up to 1600 pills a minute.

Internet video stars The Slow Mo Guys visited Purdue recently to film segments for their YouTube channel. One of the videos filmed at Zucrow Laboratories involved destroying a computer with a combustion tube, which shoots out flames at more than 4,000 miles an hour.

George Chiu, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has been elected as the Editor-in-Chief for the publication IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, starting in January 2017.

Purdue junior Charles Bowman, a mechanical engineering major in the College of Engineering, is headed to China as a 2017 Gilman Scholar. He is among 850 undergraduate students from across the U.S. selected this term to receive the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. This spring, he will study at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai.

Katie Clayton, PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering, has won 2nd place and "Fan Favorite" award in the Schurz Innovation Challenge. Her team's invention, Viratect, uses a smartphone device to detect pathogens in blood samples.

John Zink Hamworthy Combustion has been an industry leader in combustion and emissions control for more than 80 years. With Purdue's focus on combustion, it's clear why they look to hire mechanical engineers from Purdue.