Senior Capstone Students Present Research to Industry Leaders at Engineering Advisory Board Meeting

May 11, 2022 4:00 PM

 

“I like the innovation. You see a lot of ingenuity and innovation from the window sensing program to materials side. Everything we do is looking for advanced materials—light-weight, high-strength,” said Craig Wilson ‘95 of Northrop Grumman. “So, the education you’re getting here and practical hands-on understanding, everything from taking the project from idea or concept through realizing the result of it … the holistic view of design, it’s really important.”

The EAB is a diverse group of academic and industry professionals dedicated to guiding the FSU Department of Physics and Engineering. The group gives input to help strengthen existing programs as well as develop new programs and goals to meet future needs.

As an industry partner, certainly a local industry partner with Northrop Grumman, we’re looking to partner with the University where we can and help the program along. We benefit from the high-caliber quality of students that come out of the program.

Craig Wilson ‘95, Northrop Grumman

“As an industry partner, certainly a local industry partner with Northrop Grumman, we’re looking to partner with the University where we can and help the program along,” said Wilson. “We benefit from the high-caliber quality of students that come out of the program.”

Normally an annual meeting, this was the first to take place since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was an opportunity to review the current status of the programs and identify future opportunities.

The day began with opening remarks from Dr. Jamil Abdo, Chair of Physics and Engineering Department, Dr. Michael Mathias, Interim Provost, and Dr. Kim Hixson, Dean of College of Liberal Arts and Sciences followed by discussion about the State of the Department and other important topics.

Fostering connections and entrepreneurship, EAB group members discussed the program areas and the University’s unique attributes.

“Frostburg is interesting for a number of reasons,” said Charles Manto of Instant Access Networks, LLC. “First of all, the area is interesting because the remoteness is a great advantage to those that feel there may be something special about that – whether it’s a security advantage to businesses or government or it’s just a high, nice quality of life.”

Bringing various strengths and experience to the discussion, EAB members identified a variety of innovative research initiatives and partnerships in addition to outreach goals in which engineering plays a significant role.

“[The University] had an interesting history of looking at microgrids and security issues around the power grid which is a highly fragile infrastructure in the United States,” said Mantos. “Being able to experiment with ways to come up with alternative methods of power generation … is really important from a national security and energy security point of view; the area here is ideal for that kind of work and the University embraced that early on in the Maryland Industrial Partnerships Program.”