Sarah Jadwin (left) with her OSU teammates

By Sarah Jadwin, Ohio State University Outreach Coordinator

Let me just give you a little background about myself and my past experience with advanced vehicle technologies. Oh, wait…I had none.

When I first joined the EcoCAR team last year, I had no idea what I was getting into. At my first meeting with the team leaders, the only thing they were going to teach me was exactly how the car worked. I can honestly say that a minute after they started talking, I was completely lost. I remember being so overwhelmed by all the information, and they were only teaching me the basics!  While it was a huge challenge at first to understand the different engineering aspects behind the car, I eventually got it (and I’m still working on perfecting it).

After working with the team for about four or five months, it was easy to see the differences between the business team and the engineering team. Spending time around these differences and working through them first-hand made me realize something: We had to bridge the gap. My solution to this problem was an Engineering Sciences Minor. That’s right, the girl who knew nothing about cars and rarely took science classes, just declared an engineering minor!

This winter quarter, I started my first engineering classes. For me, it has truly been an eye-opener. I have thoroughly enjoyed looking at objects, situations and even our own EcoCAR vehicle, in a different way.  While this is a field that I know very little about, I am lucky that I can have a team of 40 engineers that will help me along the way!

“Wayne State University College of Engineering is very thrilled about the opportunity to host the EcoCAR 2 Kickoff Workshop,” said Wayne State University Faculty Advisor Jerry Ku. “The workshop will be a very important step, helping to set the tone as EcoCAR works toward meeting the challenge of reducing the environmental impact of vehicles without compromising performance, safety or consumer acceptability.”

Teams will have the opportunity to listen to competition organizers as they discuss deliverables about the Competition Rules, Event Rules, Emissions and Energy Consumption, Hardware and Software In-the-Loop (HIL and SIL) and donated components. Teams will also participate in extensive software training from EcoCAR sponsors, including MathWorks’ Matlab and Simulink software, Siemens PLM’s NX software and Argonne’s Autonomie software.

Organizers are hard at work preparing for the official kickoff workshop for EcoCAR 2! Registration for the workshop will launch in early August, so make sure to visit www.ecocar2.org for the latest registration details.

We look forward to seeing all 16 teams, sponsors, and organizers at the Kickoff Workshop!

My EcoCAR experience started my freshman year when I noticed a poster inviting students to join the EcoCAR team on campus. As luck would have it, I had recently decided to become an electrical engineer, and I was looking for a way to incorporate cars, a longtime hobby of mine, with my new career choice. I attended the first meeting and have been a member of the MS&T EcoCAR team ever since.

Kyle Schaefer

I’ve gained a great deal of practical electrical knowledge while working on EcoCAR. One of the most important things I’ve learned is how to transfer information from a wiring diagram into actual wires and connections. I learned that designing a wiring diagram is relatively simple, but implementing one into a car with limited space is challenging.

EcoCAR has also given me training in fail-safe system design. The overall design of our car’s controls was safety focused. At each control layer we had to implement fail-safes in order to prevent a loss of control in the vehicle. More than any one specific learning experience, EcoCAR has helped me understand just how enormous an undertaking it is to create a production vehicle. The program has been one of the defining experiences of my college education, and I will certainly apply the lessons I’ve learned to my career beyond college.

In total more than 1,500 students and parents passed through the EcoCAR exhibit. Students were particularly interested in learning how hydrogen could be sourced as a fuel for the team’s vehicle.  Since hydrogen can be separated from water (H₂O) through electrolysis, the team’s engineers demonstrated how electricity generated from clean sources like the sun could be used to create hydrogen and power a fuel cell vehicle.

UWAFT members Paul Nowosielski and Gurhari Singh explain the environmental benefits of their Hydrogen Fuel Cell Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle

The day after the engineering department event, UWAFT was at it again, as the EcoCAR exhibit hosted 7,000 high school students and their parents for Waterloo’s annual March Break Open House.  As aspiring university students and future engineers, these youngsters discovered that much of their future learning at university could very well occur outside the classroom. UWAFT highlighted the main goals and challenges of the EcoCAR competition, as well as showcasing the team’s work with industry and government to help green the automotive industry.  Parents were eager to get their children involved in a program that offers the fantastic undergraduate opportunity to work on real-world vehicles that could make a difference for generations to come.

Twenty-five Penn State EcoCAR team members, including engineers, volunteers, faculty advisors and outreach members, attended the President’s speech, and the Penn State Outreach Coordinator, Allison Lilly, had the privilege of shaking his hand!

The Team at President Obama's speech

The President’s speech focused on inspiring Penn State students to meet their potential. He emphasized the need for collegiate competition, saying, “We’re going to have to out-innovate and out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.”

The Penn State EcoCAR team is very familiar with competition and innovation, so President Obama’s speech really resonated. The President focused on clean energy, “because right now, some of the most promising innovation is happening in the area of clean energy technology — technology that is creating jobs, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and — something that every young person here cares about — making sure our planet is a healthier place to live that we can pass on to future generations.”

Obama called upon college students to try harder, work harder, and research harder – not for the grades, but for the good of our country’s future. “We need you to seek breakthroughs and new technologies that we can’t even imagine yet,” he said.  “And especially the young people who are here, we need you to act with a sense of urgency — to study and work and create as if the fate of the country depends on you – because it does.”

President Obama ended the speech with a message of hope, saying that he believes we will be able to once again set ourselves apart from the rest of the world by harnessing the energy of Penn State students and students across the nation.

The EcoCAR team left the room a little more excited to get back to work, to face their next challenge, and to set themselves apart in this outstanding engineering competition.

Like EcoCAR, the GATE Centers represent the DOE’s focus on clean vehicles and its interest in meeting ambitious goals, including President Obama’s challenge to have one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

To learn more, visit the GATE Center webpage!

Teaching this type of systems-level thinking and skills, while emphasizing hands-on learning and real-world applications, presents another major set of AVTC benefits – opportunities for students to make an almost seamless transition into careers in the auto industry and related fields. Close relationships with General Motors (GM), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), ANL and other industry heavy-hitters have an influence on the EcoCAR experience – an admittedly good one according to Virginia Tech’s EcoCAR co-team leader, Lynn Gantt, who is quoted as saying, “Who wouldn’t want their industry involved in their education? Just about everyone among the team and sub-team leaders has a job offer from industry.”

How has EcoCAR or other AVTCs prepared you for the real world? Please share your comments, we’d love to hear from you!

The survey looks at different attributes such as knowledge of different subjects, management skills and spoken languages, and measures the perceived importance of each one at different stages in an engineer’s career – from an incoming university student to an experienced practicing professional. ASEE says they hope the findings will ultimately help “enhance the preparation, performance and employability of engineering graduates around the world.” To ensure global input is captured, ASEE collaborated with the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES) and translated the survey into 12 languages.

You can find more information about the survey here and the complete form here. Findings are scheduled to be released by the end of the year. We’ll be looking out for them and share the results once they’re available!

Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi (left) and Andrew Meintz are leading the effort to prepare Missouri S&T's engineering students to design the electric and hybrid cars of the future. Photo: B.A. Rupert/Missouri S&T Communications.

When Dr. Mehdi Ferdowsi and Ph.D. student Andrew Meintz offered the inaugural class on electric and hybrid vehicles last January at Missouri University of Science and Technology, they made an instant connection with students from a variety of engineering disciplines.

Seventeen students enrolled in the course, even though it was hastily put together and not widely advertised.

“They obviously see this as a new field that is going to grow and ultimately become a new career path,” says Ferdowsi, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Missouri S&T.

That’s one of the hopes of Ferdowsi, Meintz and the federal government. Fueled by $5 million in stimulus funding from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Missouri S&T is developing a new undergraduate minor in advanced automotive technology to better prepare students for the plug-in economy.

Last semester’s introductory course, taught by Meintz, a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering, was S&T’s entry into the world of plug-in electric vehicles. Meintz makes a great instructor because he can draw upon his own experience with EcoCAR as S&T’s Electrical Team leader. “I used skills learned through the EcoCAR Challenge to tie course material with industry practice.  Not only did the course present material from a classroom lecture point of view but also used hands-on Model Based Design techniques to allow students to model hybrid electric vehicles.”

The introductory course was what Ferdowsi calls “a gateway class” designed “to familiarize students with the concepts of plug-in electric and hybrid vehicles.” Students from electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering and engineering management enrolled in the course to learn about the different fuel, powertrain and energy storage systems of electric and hybrid vehicles.

This semester, S&T has ramped up the course offerings for plug-in and hybrid automotive technology. The curriculum, which is funded through stimulus dollars, includes half a dozen undergraduate and graduate courses designed by Ferdowsi, an expert in power electronics.

The ambitious initiative of converting the auto industry from gasoline to electricity requires far-reaching efforts. Thus, S&T is also integrating coursework into existing classes and developing graduate certificate programs to help practicing engineers move into the emerging field of plug-in technology. Ferdowsi and his colleagues at S&T are also working with two other Missouri schools – the University of Central Missouri and Linn State Technical College – to provide additional work force training. In addition, Missouri S&T is helping the St. Louis Science Center educate the public about the importance of electric vehicles.

“Developing new course material is hard, especially when you’re talking about a new car that hasn’t even been developed yet,” says Ferdowsi. But creating a new course of study will ultimately have a significant impact on the nation’s economy. “We will have a pipeline of students prepared for this industry.”

Mel Corrigan began her undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at Penn State-Altoona.  Throughout her time at Altoona, she participated in the Society for Automotive Engineering Mini Baja competition.  During her junior year, she moved to the Penn State-University Park campus, where she became involved in undergraduate research studies focusing on diesel exhaust aftertreatment.

While studying at Penn State, Mel interned at Toyota Motor Mfg. in Georgetown, Kentucky in their Facilities Controls Engineering department where she compiled weekly utility consumption reports for the nine plants at the facility.  At that time, Mel also took part in the Energy Team, examining methods of improving energy consumption for vehicle manufacturing processes.

In 2002, Mel obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering at Wayne State University where she worked in an engine lab studying diesel combustion, She also participated in a National Science Foundation (NSF) project to create safety-related exercises for chemical engineering textbooks.

Mel entered graduate school at Penn State in 2003, starting with a Master’s of Science in Fuel Science.  Her research focused on performing three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics of combustion in a coal-fired boiler.

After completing her Master’s degree, Mel decided to continue her studies and obtain her Ph. D. in Fuel Science.  She shifted gears in her research, moving from modeling to experiments and then began studying the effects of intake-induced turbulence on the combustion characteristics of hydrogen assisted natural gas combustion in a spark-ignition engine.

Mel (Fox) Corrigan

Mel became involved with the Penn State Advanced Vehicle Technologies team during Challenge X. During her graduate studies, Mel received a two-year fellowship that required her to do weekly science outreach in K-12 classrooms.  This program, GREATT (Graduate Research and Education in Advanced Transportation Technologies), soon lead her to become the controls team leader for Penn State team in Year Two and the overall team leader during Year Three.

After completing a twelve-week internship in the Powertrain Systems Research group at General Motors during which she lead a project sampling and characterizing particulate matter from diesel combustion, Mel landed her first job with GM.

Mel now works as a Battery System Integration Engineer for the Chevy Volt.  She continues to support advanced vehicle technology competitions and acts as a judge for EcoCAR at workshops and competitions.  EcoCAR is not only thrilled to utilize Mel’s professional expertise, but also grateful to have her perspective as a former competitor as EcoCAR ushers in Year Three.