Course News
Data Science added new courses for spring 2024
685.662 – Data Patterns and Representations
685.701 – Data Science: Modeling and Analytics
Mechanical Engineering will be adding new courses for fall 2024 and spring 2025
EN.535.664 Fundamental Principles for Bio-microfluidic Systems (fall 2024)
EN.535.721 Advanced Composite Materials & Manufacturing Processes (spring 2025)
EN.535.734 Ultra-high Temperature Materials (spring 2025)
EN.535.743 Intermediate Applied Artificial Intelligence in Mechanical Engineering (fall 2024)
EN.535.761 Hypersonic Aerothermodynamics (spring 2024)
EN.535.762 Guidance, Navigation and Controls for Hypersonic Vehicles (spring 2025)
EN.535.771 Naval Architecture Design (spring 2025)
Program News
Applied and Computational Mathematics
Assessment examinations are available for Precalculus, Calculus 1, Calculus 2, and Calculus 3/Multivariable Calculus. Each assessment exam is an advisory tool to help you and your academic advisor gauge your preparedness for mathematics at a proper level here at EP. Please note that an exam is not a means to “pass out” of a particular course, and waivers will not be granted solely based on an exam score.
Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering has launched three new focus areas. Get the details about these exciting new topics.
- Aerospace Engineering: Students study the analysis, design, and development of aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, and rockets. Coursework provides a broad foundation in aerodynamics, aerospace materials, structures, propulsion, flight dynamics, orbital mechanics, systems integration, and aerospace manufacturing.
- Hypersonic Technologies: Students learn the complex multidisciplinary challenges associated with sustained hypersonic flight, spanning speeds from Mach 5 to orbital velocities. Additionally, courses cover the fundamentals of high-speed aerodynamics, propulsion, materials, controls, and thermal management unique to the hypersonic flight regime.
- Ocean Engineering: Explore topics such as ship hydrodynamics, offshore platforms, subsea pipelines, ocean instrumentation, wave/tidal energy, and environmental monitoring.
Faculty News
Applied Biomedical Engineering
Eileen Haase, chair of the Applied Biomedical Engineering program and an award-winning educator, was elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering 2024 College of Fellows. She was recognized for her “outstanding contributions to biomedical engineering education in the U.S. and Africa and numerous innovations in undergraduate and graduate teaching.”
Applied and Computational Mathematics
- On April 12, 2024, Tatyana Sorokina gave a keynote talk “Boeing and Splines” at the award ceremony for the High School Mathematics Contest at Indiana University−Purdue University Indianapolis.
- Program Manager Beryl Castello received the 2024 Professor Joel Dean Excellence in the Whiting School’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics (Homewood Campus). These awards recognize teaching assistants or faculty members who demonstrate an intense devotion to teaching and a talent for making mathematics and computer science more understandable.
- Program Chair James Spall has been appointed the Chair of EP’s new Industrial and Operations Engineering Program. The IOE Program will launch in summer 2024.
- James Spall served as the PhD supervisor for recent doctoral graduate in the Whiting School’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Shiqing Sun. Sun’s dissertation is “Application of SPSA-Type Algorithms in High-Dimensional Stochastic Optimization and Sampling”.
- James Spall recently published:
- “Formal Comparison of Simultaneous Perturbation Stochastic Approximation and Random Direction Stochastic Approximation,” Proceedings of the American Control Conference.
- “Quantifying the Estimation Error for a Constant-Gain Tracker,” Proceedings of the American Control Conference.
- “Uncertainty Bounds for State Estimates with Applications in Target Tracking,” presented at 2023 AIAA Defense Forum
Computer Science and Data Science
- Amir K. Saeed, Benjamin A. Johnson, and Benjamin M. Rodriguez from the Computer Science and Data Science Programs have written four papers that were presented at the SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing Conference: and one paper that was submitted to the IEEE Aerospace Conference.
- “Layered convolutional neural networks for multi-class image classification.”
- “Derivation, optimization, and comparative analysis of support vector machines application to multi-class image data”
- “Improving Computational Complexity of Multi-Target Multi-Agent Reinforcement for Hyperspectral Satellite Sensor Tasking”
- “Leveraging Deep Learning for Data Processing to Improve Discriminative Modeling Capabilities”
- “Multi-Agent and MultiTarget Reinforcement Learning for Satellite Sensor Tasking in Low Earth Orbit.”
- Lanier Watkins, chair of the Computer Science and Cybersecurity programs, will be presenting his findings on the threats that generative AI disinformation creates at the IEEE INFOCOM 2024 Conference: “Showcasing the Threat of Scalable Generative AI Disinformation through Social Media Simulation“
- EP Instructor Ian McCulloh and his students published 4 articles that touch on subjects that evaluate food addiction, bias in Chat GPT, predicting NFL achievements, and the effects that social media has on mental health.
- McCulloh, I., Older, M., McCulloh, A. (under review). “The Paradox of Food Addiction and the Obesity Epidemic: A Public Health Perspective.” JMIR Informatics.
- Erasala, R., McCulloh, I. (2024). Tweets to Touchdowns: Predicting NFL Achievement from Social Media Optimism. Proc. International Conference on Sports Analytics and Data Visualization
- Cohen, B., McCulloh, I. (2023). “Fragile Minds: Exploring the Link Between Social Media and Young Adult Mental Health.” Proc. 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining.
- Duncan, C., McCulloh, I. (2023). “Unmasking Bias in Chat GPT Responses.” Proc. 2023 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining. Kusadasi, Turkey: IEEE & ACM.
- McCulloh and co-authors addressed the issue of organ wastage and long waitlists for transplants by implementing an AI/ML system with the Organ Procurement Transplant Network (OPTN). “An experiment on the impact of predictive analytics on kidney offer acceptance decisions” was published in American Journal of Transplantation. The project involved designing a study to measure this bias and creating an AI/ML system to improve estimates of time until the next organ offer and patient mortality. After piloting the system in six centers in 2022, it was rolled out nationwide in 2023. As a result, 3,000 additional organ transplants were performed that otherwise would have been discarded.
Mechanical Engineering
- George Nakos’ new textbook, “Elementary Linear Algebra with Applications: MATLAB®, Mathematica® and Maplesoft™” will be available on May 20.