The Ohio State University

A team of Ohio State College of Engineering students has placed third in the nation in a four-year, U.S. Department of Energy competition to improve automotive technology in engine efficiency and emissions. 

The Ohio State Reverb was announced among the winners at the conclusion of the Challenge X competition yesterday at the nation's capitol. In addition, the Department of Energy named Ohio State as one of 16 universities selected to participate in the next competition, called EcoCAR: The NeXt Challenge, in which students must re-engineer a 2009 Saturn Vue to achieve improved fuel economy and reduced emissions while retaining the vehicle's performance and consumer appeal.  

Kenton Williams, a graduating senior in mechanical engineering, has been awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship that will support three years of his doctoral studies.

He conducted undergraduate research through the Ohio State Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP) working on a computer simulation of a biped robot using MatLab and C++ software, with Jim Schmiedeler, assistant professor in mechanical engineering. Williams studied the use of Passivity Based Control to regulate the total energy of the system. He is interested in studying robotics and bio-mimicry while pursuing his doctoral degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after completing his undergraduate degree at Ohio State this coming spring.

Two mechanical engineering students were recently awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship that provides three years of support for graduate study leading to research-based master's or doctoral degrees; totaling an amount of nearly $121,500 for each award recipient.

Widely considered the most prestigious award in the U.S. conferred upon undergraduates studying the sciences, The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship has been awarded to mechanical engineering undergraduate Ehsan Sadeghipour.

Out of the 321 scholarships awarded nationwide, 52 were awarded to engineering majors. Many of the scholars have dual majors in a variety of mathematics, science, engineering, and computer disciplines; at Ohio State, Sadeghipour will also earn a minor in economics.

Craig Pavlich loves to remind Eric Schacht about the time he "broke the car."

"Well, I was driving rather ... aggressively, and I snapped the axle shaft," said Schacht, a junior in electrical engineering. "We had to get the car towed."

"Everyone's waiting for him, and he never shows up," said Pavlich, a senior in mechanical engineering.

"The GM guys welded it back together," Schacht said.