You are here: Home » News and Events
News and Events
click here for ME electric news click
here for posters on view in the Engineering Quad
STONY BROOK MOTORSPORTS TEAM PLACES 2ND IN BAJA SAE INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION
Vehicle design and performance is runner up in a field of 120 colleges and universities
June 23, 2008
STONY BROOK, N.Y., June 26, 2008 – The Stony Brook University Motorsports team took 2nd place out of an international field of 120 collegiate teams at the 2008 Baja SAE competition in Montreal, Canada. The Baja SAE is a four-day event that simulates real-world engineering design projects in which teams of engineering students are tasked to design and build an off-road vehicle that will survive the severe punishment of rough terrain. All vehicles are powered by a standard ten horsepower engine donated by Briggs & Stratton Corporation.
 |
| The 2008 Stony Brook Motorsports Baja SAE vehicle in action during competition in Montreal, Canada. |
“We are very proud of our team this year, yet this student project is not just about racing,” says Dr. Yacov Shamash, VP of Economic Development and Dean of the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University. “Students from the Stony Brook Motorsports program benefit from exceptional employment opportunities, receiving internships and full time job offers from such companies as GE, Ford, Boeing, GM, Motorola, Timken, and Honda, just to name a few.”
Baja SAE Collegiate design series draws teams from universities around the world to compete for top honors. The students design, build, test, and race off-road vehicles, and are judged on static design elements such as ergonomics, safety, and aesthetics as well as dynamic events including maneuverability and acceleration. The whole event culminates in a four-hour endurance race around a custom designed track during which both vehicles and drivers are put to the ultimate test. This race begins with more than 100 cars and finishes with a fraction of that number still in operation.
While other racing venues might encourage the application of more power to go faster, the Baja SAE competition series requires students to address issues such as parasitic drivetrain losses, vehicle weight reduction, control dynamics, as well as power transmission and application, in order to produce a more competitive design. Team advisor, Noah Machtay, who is an Instructional Support Specialist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering as well as a Ph.D. candidate, stresses the significance of this aspect of the project, saying, “In a world where energy costs are rising, and the environmental effects of human activities are being recognized as a major concern for the future, engineers with this type of training will be in a very strong position to make a positive impact on society.”
The Stony Brook Motorsports team, formally MiniBaja, has participated in competitions every year for the past 15 years and the rankings have steadily improved. Last year, they were ranked number 3 overall. The team was founded 20 years ago by a group of Mechanical Engineering students with Professor Lin-Shu Wang of the department of Mechanical Engineering as the advisor. Stony Brook Motorsports has been championed by Professor Fu-pen Chiang since he became the department chair of Mechanical Engineering some 15 years ago.
“The College of Engineering and Applied Science believes that the integration of classroom material with hands-on experience is a critical advantage which allows our students to apply what they learn to the real world,” says Dr. Imin Kao, Associate Dean and Professor of Mechanical Engineering. “The Baja SAE project is a prime example of this principle in operation.” In fact, this year's winning effort was done as part of Mechanical Engineering’s senior design projects with Professor Yu Zhou as the course instructor.
This year the Stony Brook Motorsports team was sponsored by Flagpoles Inc., PK Metals, Dayton T. Brown, Motorola, Timken, Polaris, Briggs & Stratton, and Fox Racing Shox among others. On-campus sponsors include the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Undergraduate Student Government, URECA and UAA, Provost Eric W. Kaler, Vice President for Research Gail Habicht, and President Shirley Strum Kenny.
“I am extremely proud and honored to have had the opportunity to work with such talented and hardworking teammates,” said Stony Brook Team President Jean Christian Brutus, who is a graduating senior in Mechanical Engineering and will be a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at Stony Brook University for Fall 2008. “Without our sponsors, none of this could be possible, and we can’t thank them enough for their support.”
ASME LONG ISLAND CHAPTER TECHNICAL MEETING AND SEMINAR ON "CURRENT HYPERSONIC RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES"
March 26, 2008
The Long Island Chapter of ASME held a technical meeting and professional seminar on "Current Hypersonic Research in the United States" at Stony Brook University on March 26th. There were over 80 people attending, including students, faculty, and local engineers. The two speakers were from ATK GASL in Ronkonkoma, NY. The main speaker was Dr. Robert Bakos, Vice President and General Manager of ATK GASL. The other speaker was Dr. John C. Leylegian, Senior Scientist, Aerodynamics and Propulsion Analysis, ATK GASL. It was one of the greatest seminars ASME had in Long Island according to LI Chapter's executive board.
STONY BROOK MOTORSPORTS TEAM WITH PRESIDENT KENNY AT ALBANY DAY
March 4, 2008
Stony Brook Motorsports team attended Albany Day yesterday, March 4, 2008, where they represented the fantastic work we have going on here at Stony Brook, and more specifically in the College of Engineering and Applied Science and Mechanical Engineering department. The team generated a high level of interest and exposure. President Kenny enjoyed their participation as well . . .
Special thanks to the CEAS Dean's office, and in particular Henry Honigman, who all pulled together a great deal of resources to make this possible.
FREE SOFTWARE FROM PIPEFLOW - SPRING 2008
PipeFlow.co.uk is providing Stony Brook University's Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students with fluid flow design and analysis software for free to use for their senior design projects.
CALCULATOR POLICY
Effective spring, 2008 only the following calculators will be permitted to be used on all midterm and final exams in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. There will be no exceptions! This list of calculators is identical to that allowed for the National Council for Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam that many of you will take in your senior year, as well as the Professional Engineering (PE) exam that you may take several years from now. The sooner you become comfortable on one of these calculators, the better.
NCEES Allowed calculators as of spring 2008:
| Casio: | All fx-115 models. Any Casio calculator must contain fx-115 in its model name. |
| Hewlett Packard: | The HP 33s and HP 35s models, but no others. |
| Texas Instruments: | All TI-30X and TI-36X models. Any Texas Instruments calculator must contain either TI-30X or TI-36X in its model name. |
The NCEES policy on calculators can be found here: http://www.ncees.org/exams/calculators.
THREE STONY BROOK STUDENTS
AWARDED SCHOLARSHIPS FOR MECHANCIAL ENGINEERING
ACECNY Provides $2,500 to Each for Senior year
STONY BROOK, N.Y., May, 2007—Three Stony Brook University students have each been awarded a $2,500 scholarship towards their senior year college expenses from the Long Island region of the American Council of Engineering Companies of New York (ACECNY). The three students, all juniors, are majoring in Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Jonathan Bielik, 20, of Plainview, Milan Karunaratne, 20, of White Plains, and Jessica Newman, 21, from Centereach each were chosen for the awards based on their achievements in mechanical engineering.
Bielik has a 3.92 GPA. He is the 2006 recipient of the Linda and Rich Gelfond Scholarship and a member of the Engineering Honor Society. Karunaratne has a 3.71 GPA and is a member of the Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Automotive Engineers. Newman has a 3.71 GPA and is member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and a recipient of the Citigroup/Women in Science and Engineering scholarship.
All three students are members of the Stony Brook Motor Sports team, which participates in national competitions to design and construct all-terrain motor vehicles.
ME Winter Newsletter just a click away...Winternewsletter06
Summer Newsletter (459 KB PDF) , 2005 (06/24/2005)
Click on the picture above for the summer newsletter. Thank you, Ann.
Summer News Update
Click here for 03 Newsletter
Click here for 02 Newsletter
Click here for 01 Newsletter
Anurag Purwar wins Presidential Award (03/22/2005)
Alumni Management System for ME Graduates (08/29/2004)
Connect with your alma-mater, contact your lost friends, participate in forums, and have fun. Register now or log on.
About this site (08/29/2004)
Welcome to the New Web Site of Mechanical Engineering Dept. (Alert: Tech Talk ahead) The whole site has been redone using new xhtml 1.0 standard and employs Server Side Includes (SSI) and valid Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). The new site also decouples the issue of structure, color, and rendering from the content. The requested pages are fed to a php scripting engine before they are sent to the client.
Feel free to visit various pages and drop a comment, if you have any, to the webmaster.