Welcome to college!

While many big challenges are still on the horizon, don’t forget how far you’ve come already! Getting into college is not an easy task, so soak it up!

That said, while the excitement of your first days on campus is high (and well deserved,) I am confident that the butterflies are also floating through your stomach, when you think about your coursework. Going into science and engineering can be daunting, academically speaking. So many numbers, the long equations, the complex new rules and long nights of studying…how does anyone make it through?!

First off, don’t panic.

Here are three simple tips to help you survive your first year as an engineering undergrad, and set up some healthy habits for the rest of your time on campus:

1) Eat Right and Get Some Sleep

Before you start to think this is a lecture from your parents, just listen. Going to bed at a reasonable hour and eating right, will prepare your body for rough times to come. Especially as an engineer, there WILL be late-night study sessions; days when you eat only from a vending machine; and there won’t be much warning of when those days are going to come. But when they do, you want to be on the front foot, with your body fully prepared to take on the challenge. When it’s crunch time you want your body and mind ready to roll, not coasting on a few hours of sleep and half a bag of chips.

2) Make Good Friends

Some people have come to college to party first, and study second (if at all). It’s not so much about learning for them. This might work for less rigorous degree programs, but as an engineer you need people who are going to ride out the long evenings in the library alongside you. Making the right friends early on can set the trajectory of the next few years. You can pick up a lot from the people you hang around with (including study habits) so remember to choose wisely.

3) Do Your Homework

Unlike high school, when professors assign homework they will rarely collect it. Even when they do, it likely won’t be worth much of your final grade. It can be easy to blow off this “busy work” in favor of more interesting past times. However, this homework has a purpose – to reinforce concepts and in some cases teach things the professor didn’t get to in their lecture. It might seem unfair to be tested on something not discussed in class, but I can guarantee you; if it’s in your homework it can be on an exam.

So getting shut-eye, finding some solid pals, doing your homework, and not skimping on the vegetables should be a good start, but don’t forget the most important thing. College is a time to explore, have fun, and discover ones self—even engineering students!

Your first year will not always be an easy ride. In fact, it’s often not an easy ride. But by working hard and making good choices, you’re setting yourself up for a diploma and a very bright future. And who knows: Maybe you’ll have some fun along the way.

“People don’t like engineers because engineers are always the ones who bring up all the problems.”

When my manager told me this I had to take a moment to calm myself down and not be offended. After all, this manager was a fellow engineer, and a good friend, so I knew it wasn’t meant as an insult. But still the comment hurt: How could people not like engineers?

It is true though; engineers tend to point out problems before they become apparent to others, and have a few tendencies which can bother our non-engineer colleagues and acquaintances. But many of these habits are for good reason! Here are three simple reasons engineers have gotten a bad rap, and three simpler reasons as to why people’s assumptions are misguided:

We need problems to solve.

Engineers are trained problem solvers. Everything is broken in our eyes, be it a system, a procedure, or a product, we know there is a flaw in it somewhere. Finding those problems, gathering information on them, and coming to a solution is what we do. Even if something is running smoothly, we know one day it won’t and when that day comes, we will be ready with the fix in hand! Sometimes people don’t see it, but we are always trying to improve and even perfect the environment in which we operate.

We spend a lot of time with data.

We swim in an ocean of data. We categorize it, break it down, analyze it, looks for trends, try to spot patterns, and hunt down the causes behind anomalies. Because we are so closely tied to that data we (usually) predict issues, like a spider feeling vibrations through its web, long before others. Our focus on minutiae may come off as obsessive to some, but we are trying to save future headaches, avoid costly mistakes, and get it right—the first time.

We don’t jump to conclusions. Ever.

People have questions. And they usually want answers. Fast. But what may seem like a simple question to them, often times requires a series of complex calculations, validations and cross-checks. We aren’t in the business of saying “we can’t do that”, but an ill-advised yes or no can put a project’s integrity or people’s safety at risk. Getting something right is usually worth taking some time, but that is often hard to communicate.

Now some engineers like to use their reputation as a weapon, waiting till the waning minutes of a simple, seemingly productive meeting to poke a huge hole in the topic at hand.

But it’s important to remember that he/she isn’t a jerk because they are an engineer. They are just a jerk.

(Note: Craig does not officially condone hating people- engineers or otherwise)

There seems to have been a lot of engineering innovations in the cycling world over the last year, taking shape in the form of new and inventive products for cyclists. I first noticed and got excited about the invisible bike helmet and then came across the tail-light/video recorder combo called Fly6 and, of course, the glow-in-the-dark bicycle frames called Lumen.

Well this week, I’ve discovered yet another product aimed at cyclists. The difference is that this time, the product is aimed at motorcyclists.

On August 10, the Skully campaign was launched on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. The initial funding target of $250,000 was smashed in the first day and the total is sitting at just under $1,000,000 as I’m looking at it now.

Skully is touting itself as “The World’s Smartest Motorcycle Helmet” and it has certainly caught the eye of some big names in the tech industry. Popular Mechanics described the launch of Skully as “The beginning of a motorcycle tech revolution” and CNN said that Skully has “the potential… to save lives, to make our daily existences a little bit easier”.

So what is all the excitement about?

Skully is something of a cross between a hi-tech, modern helmet and some of the best functionality from the wearable tech world. The helmet integrates audio and visual information to give the rider an intelligent, heads-up display and voice notifications. GPS navigation is included as well as a wide-angled rear-view camera mounted to the helmet, allowing the rider to see what’s happening around them without having to move more than their eyes.

The helmet can connect to a smartphone, naturally, which allows access to the internet, hand-free calling and streaming of music. If supported by the motorcycle, Skully can also display vehicle telemetry such as speed, gear or tachometer values.

This is surely yet another step in the direction of intelligent, portable technology being used to improve the tasks we carry out day to day. The excitement around Skully is incredible. Let’s see how big a step Skully can take and who is going to take the next one.

We DON’T Live in a sci-fi movie.

At least that’s what I had to keep telling myself when researches were unable to find the cause behind a mass-less propulsion device. It’s made a bit of a splash on the internet the past few days and that’s understandable. With such a device, interplanetary missions to such places as the moon, Mars, and even the moons of Jupiter all seem possible!

But as my thermodynamics professor warned, “Nearly 100% of those claiming they have broken the laws of physics are lying. The rest are misguided.”

There are three simple ways to weed out nearly every claim as astounding as violating the conservation of momentum:

1) Has the paper been peer reviewed?

Why it’s important: Like your parents told you when you were little: chose the friends you make wisely. Peer reviewed papers mean that others in the community have seen this work, weighed in on it, and provided feedback before going to publishing. That brings us to the second point:

2) Has the paper been published in a reputable journal?

Why it’s important: I can write a paper about flying monkeys and their attempts to infiltrate and overthrow the government, but that doesn’t necessarily make it true. I’m fairly sure the internet is big enough for someone to even agree with me. However I’m never going to get my paper in a respectable journal.

Journals are a lot like papers, there are trusted ones like AIAA and there are others that are not so trusted. It’s kind of like comparing the Wall Street Journal to the Weekly World News (Headline: Bat Boy visits President!). Remember just because someone printed it doesn’t mean it’s truthful.

3) Does the corresponding work conform to previous or concurrent work being done?

This is a bit tricky because it instantly makes us skeptical of “miracles” and “breakthroughs”. This is a good thing because it keeps us from running away with insufficiently supported theories. It also means that an experiment must be duplicated many times before the results are accepted into the general body of science.

Now in this case you can make the argument that an AIAA conference proceeding is a sufficiently reputable source to publish in. Also this “EM Drive” was successfully tested in China and in a few peoples garages. Finally, a conference paper is a great way to seek out peer reviews and attempts to validate their findings further.

So really what we are seeing is the process at work, not the final result. Despite some early success, this potential new technology has a long way to go before we can really accept it…But that didn’t keep me from squealing with excitement when I first read about it!

I’m not going to knock any of those things—because they are all very important–but I don’t think they’re the only pieces of advice to keep in mind. If you’re considering (or have signed up for) an engineering degree we can probably assume that you’re already prepared to work hard and go to lectures. You’re probably already pretty good at math and you probably have at least some idea of what engineering involves.

So here are two pieces of advice from me. You’ve probably already heard these things before, but you probably don’t realize how important they are yet. I certainly wish that I’d done more of these things when I was at college.

Get hands on

I like to think of engineering as the application of science. As engineers, we’re responsible for bringing scientific principles and concepts to life in the real world. Engineering is about real things. It’s about getting hands on and creating something.

Clearly we don’t all build bridges or buildings or fix engines (which is what a lot of people think of when we’re talking about getting “hands on”), but engineers are always involved in something tangible. Even software engineering, which may appear to be one of the more abstract disciplines, is usually involved in shaping how people control or interact with a physical, real world object.

So, don’t sit behind your desk for too long. Don’t think you can read everything you need to know in books or online. A big part of engineering is about making real things. That’s not something you can learn from a book. You have to get hands on and experience it for yourself.

Ask for help

One of the most important things about engineering (which took me a very long time to realize) is that you don’t have to do everything on your own. In fact, with engineering in particular, it’s important that you don’t.

Good communication and the ability to work with other people are crucial in engineering. Don’t be afraid to seek out support or ask for advice. I’ve found that asking the right question of the right person can give me the answers I much quicker than struggling through on my own (even with the power of Google).

Having said that, there is a balance that must be met. As an engineer, you need to pull your weight and many problems on your own. Over time you’ll figure out which problems to solve yourself and which to ask for help with. Just don’t be too quick to rule out the option of asking for help.

The task was straightforward enough, I was presenting the conclusions from a series of reports and studies in which my colleagues and I had been coming up with ways to improve a complex, but very dated and verging on obsolete, piece of kit. I’d put plenty of work into planning and preparing. I’d remembered my 3 presentation tips for engineers. Everything was ready to go, or so I thought.

I had lots of pictures and diagrams on my slides (after all, engineers tend to be a very visual breed) and was set up to bring things to life by talking about the physical operation of the system in question. In particular I had focused my thoughts and planned my words on the changes we were proposing to make. Some of these changes were fairly significant and my team and I were convinced that the concepts we’d come up with were a perfect fit for the requirements we were trying to meet.

I launched into my presentation and began to discuss the merits and risks of the solutions I was presenting and some interesting discussion ensued. Then, I flashed up an image which showed a potential addition to a part of the system. I had only included the diagram so that I could show the proposed additional components in context. But as soon as the diagram appeared on the screen I knew that I’d made a mistake.

It quickly became clear that at least half of the people in the room were not as familiar with the system in question as I had thought. I had a assumed the audience were coming with a familiarity of the system we were looking to improve. It turns out that I was wrong.

The consequence of this assumption was that all of a sudden, a whole raft of comments and questions about the original system were raised. People were trying to get their heads around not just the changes I was presenting but also the original system. The mere presence of the diagram I had shown prompted people to want to dig a little deeper into some of the fundamentals, rather than the things I wanted them to be exploring. My focus on the proposed changes was lost in that moment and I never really got it back. We were bogged down with details outside the scope of the material I wanted to communicate and it was slow going from that point onwards.

Clearly when I’m in this situation again I’ll do things a little differently. The value of starting right from the beginning and making sure everyone understands what’s going on cannot be overstated. Rather than assuming everyone has the same knowledge and experience of a particular subject as me, it’d be much safer to assume nobody has any knowledge of the subject being discussed. Even the most complex ideas can be built up to from this starting point.

This experience has made me think, though, that I’m making assumptions all of the time. It’s actually very difficult to notice all of the assumptions we’re making. Today I’m reminded that even the most basic and simple instruction, to assume nothing, takes constant effort to actually deliver on.

I sat down at my desk and booted up my computer like I always. There were a few error messages that came up saying I couldn’t connect to some network drive. I ignored them as our IT folk were always messing with the system and these messages weren’t uncommon.

But a few hours later my machine began acting… odd.

-       It had trouble loading external webpages.

-       Then it wouldn’t let me connect to our shared drives.

-       Then my email server stopped.

This had to be in relation to the new software that IT had just installed, a reboot was obviously in order.

When the machine rebooted all I had was the desktop and my clock widget.

After a few more reboots and some mucking around what little of the system I could get to I broke down and called IT.

“We locked you out of your system because your training is out of date you need to speak with your training manager.” The tech told me.

“Ok, how do I look up who is my training manager without a computer?” I asked

I could sense the tech shrugging as he told me it wasn’t his problem and hung up on me.

After several hours I managed to track down the person in charge of training.

“I don’t see you in my system.” She told me.

“But I’ve worked here for 5 years!” I exclaimed.

“Well you’re not in my system so you will need to fill out a form to request access to the training site and access it through your computer and get up to date on your training.” She huffed.

“Ok, how do I do that without  my computer?”

This time I could see her shrug as she turned away – This obviously wasn’t her problem.

Eventually I tracked down the required form (we are a paperless office and all of them are typically online) and got access to the training site. Then I begged someone else to take the rest of the day off so I could use their computer and complete my training on their machine. That took an additional 3 hours.

By the time I had finished my training it was time to go home.  With the training manager appeased, I returned back to the IT tech and asked him how long until my computer was unlocked.

“2-3 days, we aren’t very busy around here so you’re lucky!” I couldn’t tell if this was sarcasm or not.

Broken, battered, disillusioned, but fully trained I trudged back out to my car to return. Maybe tomorrow would be a better day.

Lesson of the day: Stay up on your training folks!

So when Elon Musk says that he can cut the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100 by reusing hardware I get a little nervous.

I confess to be an unabashed fan of SpaceX and their accomplishments; they’ve done brilliant work and accomplished things many in the industry said couldn’t be done. I also believe that they still have many more innovations to come.

But reusing hardware isn’t one of them. Here’s why:

When you build an engine from scratch you begin with new materials of a known quality. You then build your engine while conducting numerous quality inspections before (ideally) performing a test fire.

When you reuse an engine there are several more steps that are added:

The engine must be disassembled, cleaned, and then checked for damage, wear, or fatigue that is beyond what is expected. If any is found it must be analyzed and then certified safe to fly. Then the engine must be reassembled while conducting the same quality checks as before.

In a perfect world this process would only take double the time of the original build, however the reality is it can take two to three times longer and is expensive because you are paying for not only line workers but inspectors and engineers.

Is there a way to mitigate this process?

Perhaps.

But in doing so you would need to eliminate any ocean landings – something SpaceX has failed at twice. Because exposure to seawater is extremely damaging and can cause several forms of corrosion that is time consuming and difficult to analyze.

Next you need to build an engine so robust that you can fire it numerous times with no maintenance in between firings. This means a high degree of reliability. Such reliability comes from higher factors of safety and analysis. High factors of safety come from costlier designs and more materials both mean more expensive and heavier engines.  Weight is something you try to avoid when designing rockets.

So can you reuse a rocket engine?

Absolutely.

Can you do it and preserve safety while cutting costs?

That’s something no one in the world has been able to do yet.

Prime Air

When I first heard about this idea towards the end of last year, I thought it was a joke. Apparently it’s not. Amazon is keen to explore the concept of using unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones as most people like to call them) to offer super quick delivery of products from the Amazon catalog to customers.

Last week, Amazon submitted a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requesting permission to test drones in outdoor areas near Seattle above one of its R&D labs. Currently the FAA regulations do not permit companies to fly drones, with the only exception being made for hobbyists and model plane manufacturers.

Amazon has been developing their airborne delivery service, which they’re calling Amazon Prime Air, behind closed doors and in other countries and it’s looking quite impressive so far. Validating the safety and reliability of such a system is going to be a tough task though. I expect it’ll be a while yet before we see the regulatory authorities approve something like this for commercial use.

Wearables

Back in January, the signs were there for a wearable technology revolution in 2014. It seems that Amazon expects to see growth in the wearables market too. A couple of months ago they launched a wearable technology store dedicated to the products (a UK version followed shortly afterwards). Andrew Milliken, the director of consumer electronics for Amazon.co.uk, said ”[s]ales of wearable technology devices have taken off in the last year with many customers already using them on a daily basis….”

With Amazon creating and promoting this new category of products, it seems clear the they’re here to stay. It’s probably quite likely that we’ll see a flurry of activity around wearables as the holiday season approaches. Hopefully there will be some new and innovative uses of wearable technology released before the year is out.

1. Please tell us a little about Maney Publishing, its mission, and the communities it serves.

Maney is an independent publishing company that specializes in academics journals. It covers a range of subject areas including materials science and engineering, health sciences and the humanities. Maney has offices in London, Philadelphia and Leeds.

The company started out as an imprint from a printing company in 1997 and is now publishing over 150 titles and work with societies, universities and publishing bodies around the world.

2. Alma, you are the Editor-In-Chief of Maney’s newest journal. Can you tell us a little about that journal? What can we expect?

Our new science journal, Advanced Manufacturing: Polymer & Composites Science, has been devised with a lot of enthusiasm, attracting one of the most experienced editorial boards in materials science publishing. This will be the first science journal dedicated solely to the new advances in innovative composites manufacturing that will change the landscape of transport industries in the future. Thanks to Maney’s new informative and visual online platform, this journal will serve as a focal point for our diverse scientific community.

3. What do you see as the top trends in advanced manufacturing today?

The current research is bent on novel manufacturing methods that can save time, resources and material waste while improving the impact on the environment, mainly through different combinations of advanced printing and automated techniques. There are three directions here – the most exciting one is where new material systems and the corresponding new manufacturing methods are developed simultaneously.  In terms of impact, the challenge here would be to validate the new material and to scale-up the new manufacturing method at the same time, which is rarely achievable in the zero-risk aerospace industry.

The other two directions are – new manufacturing methods for the existing advanced composites (keeping in mind cost-effectiveness and quality of the production), and finally, developing new materials for the existing cutting-edge manufacturing processes. The last option will be outside the scope of this journal. We are looking for the new manufacturing (or processing or fabrication) methods that will be both innovative, and lead to high impact.

4. How do we best support the continued creation of innovative materials? How do we encourage sharing of those innovations across disciplines and industries?

Our global community has recently experienced an unprecedented growth in knowledge and R&D investment. Based on a U.K. (Sheffield) model, Advanced Manufacturing Research Centres that bring industry and academia together have been built across the globe in all types of advanced manufacturing R&D applications. To give you an example that can be replicated across the globe, the U.K. has quite a few large centers capable of developing advanced composites manufacturing techniques, such as The National Composites Centre, The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre with Boeing, Northwest Composites Centre and The Northern Ireland Advanced Composites & Engineering Centre, collaboratively connected through Technology Strategy Board and EPSRC funded Industrial Doctorate Centre and Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Composites. This will be the future of our research: all innovative concepts stemming from the university research, including serendipitous science developments, will find an easier route towards a cost-effective R&D scale-up in the collaborative environment led by industrial partners and potential customers.

We aim to disseminate some of the best scientific practices in this complex discipline through AMPCS, and to assist our authors and readership in producing their impact on the society.

5. What skills do engineers need in order to secure a career in materials science?  

This will be quite a challenge for our future generations of scientists, academics and engineers. We have a massive expansion in the development of new types of composite materials in need of multidisciplinary sciences such as advanced printed composites (rapid manufacturing), biomimetic structures (biology), self-healing and self-sensing systems (materials science, chemistry and physics), in addition to already complex chemistry and numerically challenging models that need to be developed for each system and service conditions.  We will eventually need to develop specialised courses for each of those applications, rather than teach composites in general.

6. Which industries are making the biggest leaps in composites and polymers?

Aerospace industry is in the lead, although the biggest user is the automotive sector. The strict requirements in the structural integrity of all aircraft structures, lower fuel emissions and zero-risk attitude to new technology adoption are the biggest drivers for the best know-how in design & manufacturing of advanced materials.

7. Tell us a little about your relationship with Knovel: why did you decide to work with us, and what value does it bring your team?

A number of books that we publish for the European Federation of Corrosion are on the Knovel platform so we’ve known about this resource for a while. The topics covered and the articles you highlight, as well as your readers, match the subjects we cover in materials science and engineering well. This is a really useful resource and it’s great to be involved.

Alma Hodzic is a Professor of Advanced Materials Technologies at the University of Sheffield, U.K., and Director of the EPSRC High Value Manufacturing Catapult Fellowship Centre, which is dedicated to strengthening relations between academics and manufacturers, and accelerating the transition of research from the laboratory to industry. She has been Research Director of Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (2012-2014) at The University of Sheffield, a joint venture with Boeing and over a hundred industrial partners, and Director of Composite Systems Innovation Centre (2009-2014) with over 55 academic staff and researchers dedicated to science of composites across the university.

She holds a Ph.D. degree in Science of Engineering Materials from The Australian National University, and Diplom-Ingenieur degree (MEng) in Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, Magna Cum Laude from University of Belgrade, having previously specialised in Mechanics of Solid Bodies (Mathematical Division) at the Aviation Academy Belgrade.

Her research has been funded by EPSRC, Technology Strategy Board, Knowledge Transfer Partnership, Qatar Science and Technology Park, Air Force Office of Scientific Research (EOARD), EU FP7, and through collaborations with aerospace, automotive and railway industries. She has chaired and co-chaired three international conferences: Deformation and Fracture of Composites and Structural Integrity, Cambridge (2013 and 2011), and Sheffield (2009) and serves as EPSRC College Member, IntReader for Australian Research Council, Vice Chair and co-establisher of the Royal Aeronautical Society branch in Sheffield, Council Member of European Society for Composite Materials and Chair of British Composite Society Meetings Committee. She also serves as Advisory Board Member on a number of national research bodies.

Alma holds eight science awards and five patents in the fields of novel polymer composites, multifunctional materials, biopolymers, natural fibre composites and elastomeric fire-resistant microcomposites. She is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.