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Virginia Tech wins 3 top spots at NASA competition.
After a year-long effort to explore urban air mobility and the use of regional air vehicles in a firefighting environment, three Virginia Tech capstone design teams have earned the top three spots in this year’s NASA Aeronautics University Design Challenge, the university announced this week.
The annual design competition, sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics and Space Administration, gives student teams the opportunity to solve the biggest technical challenges facing the aviation community.
Virginia Tech teams have brought home the top honor 11 times over the past decade. Capturing three majors in one year is unprecedented.
Professor Pradeep Raj says he incorporates the design challenge into the classroom, as missions and technical challenges are often system-specific as opposed to focusing on a single vehicle.
“I found this approach to broaden the horizons and expand the design space of the students,” Raj said in a news release. “Designing service ships opens up possibilities for different types of vehicles, different sizes, propulsion systems, and challenges students to closely examine the entire operational process to successfully complete their mission.”
The undergraduate curriculum at Virginia Tech’s Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering leads up to a year-long capital design experience in the senior year. Aerospace engineering design courses use the team design process to better simulate the way design works in the real world and promote the benefits of collaborative learning.
Raj and Acting Professor Wm. Michael Butler serves as faculty and advisor for the Air Vehicle Design Track in the Capital Design Course for the 2021-22 academic year.
Eight air vehicle groups were recommended by Raje and Butler. Three teams ultimately submitted their essay proposals to NASA, and out of approximately twelve university teams, all three Virginia Tech teams came out on top of the pack.
Student teams were asked to design vehicles that would collectively deliver 3,000 gallons of water to a fire in one pass. The vehicles were designed to collect water from local water sources, such as lakes, rivers or oceans, which required short vertical take-off and landing operations. Currently, helicopters are used to reach these small water sources.
Recent graduate Colin Fisher served as team leader for H2AERO, the team that took first place honors.
The design of the H2AERO fleet is optimized for regional air mobility with a focus on maximizing water availability and reducing take-off distance while reducing energy use, cost and noise levels. The aircraft’s ultra-short or vertical takeoff and landing capabilities allow it to bridge the gap between the U.S. Forest Service’s traditional takeoff and landing fixed-wing aircraft and vertical takeoff and landing helicopters. The four-plane fleet can deliver up to 750 gallons of water per vehicle and 3,000 gallons per pass through a unique scoop tube and high-lift distributed electric generator.
The team, led by recent graduate Ben Judelson, is building an aerial firefighting system consisting of a remotely piloted lead aircraft and eight manned water tankers.
Firefighter Gobbler, led by Michael Deitch, presented “The Flock” aerial firefighting system, equipped with six very short or vertical takeoff and landing aircraft in an environmentally friendly and cost-effective manner.
The three Virginia Tech teams were invited to visit NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton in October to share their work in person.
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MECC will receive a federal grant to start a health information technology data analysis certificate program
Mountain Empire Community College has received an $887,676 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Health Resources and Services Administration to create and deliver a professional studies certificate program in health information technology data analytics, the school announced this week.
The program is designed to help healthcare professionals develop healthcare business information management skills in database management, change and project management strategies. Health IT data analysts work in hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, clinical research, consulting firms, and other health-related institutions.
The data analyst program, set to begin this fall, will run for two semesters. The goal is to provide health information management graduates with advanced information and project management training to advance their careers and create a space for entry-level workers to enter the industry.
MECC is the only community college in Virginia to receive an HHS award, including nearly $60 million in federal investment to grow the health care workforce and access to quality health care in rural communities, including nearly $46 million from Save America. Plan.
The grant will fund faculty costs, curriculum development and student scholarships for three years.
For more information on the program, contact Nora Blankenbecler at 276-523-9054 or nblankenbecler@mecc.edu. Additional program information is available online.
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Virginia Tech and Zimbabwean teams lead the search and naming of Africa’s oldest dinosaur
An international team of paleontologists led by Virginia Tech has discovered a new, early dinosaur, the university announced Wednesday.
The mostly intact skeleton was discovered by graduate students in Virginia Tech’s Department of Geosciences and other paleontologists in two excavations in 2017 and 2019.
The discovery of this new sauropodomorph — a long-necked dinosaur — with a new name, Mbiresaurus rathi, was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The skeleton is the oldest dinosaur fossil ever found in Africa. The animal is estimated to be 6 feet long with a long tail. It weighs from 20 pounds to 65 kilograms. A skeleton with only a hand and part of the skull missing was found in northern Zimbabwe.
From the group’s findings, Mbiresaurus stood on two legs and its head was relatively small, like its dinosaur relatives. It sported small, lined, triangular teeth, suggesting it might be a herbivore or omnivore.
In the year “The discovery of Embyrosaurus rati fills an important geographic gap in the fossil record of early dinosaurs and demonstrates the power of hypothesis-driven fieldwork,” said Christopher Griffin, a 2020 Ph.D. D. in geoscience from Virginia Tech College of Science and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University.
Griffin added, “These are the best-known dinosaurs in Africa, and are about the same age as the oldest dinosaurs in the world.” The best-known dinosaurs – from 230 million years ago, the Carnian stage of the Late Triassic period – are extremely rare and have been recovered from only a few places around the world, mainly from northern Argentina, southern Brazil and India.
The international team at the center of this discovery includes paleontologists from the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe and the Universidad de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
Found alongside Mbiresaurus are Carnian-aged fossils, herrerasaurid dinosaurs, early mammal relatives such as cynodonts, armored crocodilian relatives, and what Griffin describes as “strange, primitive reptiles” known as rhyncholiosaurs from this same period in South America and India.
Most of the Mbiresaurus specimen is being preserved in Virginia Tech’s Deering Hall while the skeleton is cleaned and studied. All Mbiresaurus skeletons and additional fossils found are permanently housed at the Zimbabwe Museum of Natural History.
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Children’s musical events coming to Radford University
Auditions are complete and the cast is ready for Radford University’s annual performance.
By Young Audiences: “Rainbow Fish Musician.
The play is a warning about vanity and self-importance inspired by the popular kids.
The book “Rainbow Fish” by Swiss writer and illustrator Markus Pfister.
Associate professor and stage veteran Robin Berg directs and directs the show. Dylan Jones plays the title role and is joined by Sarah Lindsay Merriman as Little Fish and Sidney Pepper as Octopus. Three other actors will play double roles: Georgie Fenimore will play Starfish and Mrs. Minnow, Zoe Keith will play Sardine and Clownfish, and the roles of Pufferfish and Hermit Crab will be played by Olivia Nargy. Graduate student Cole Butler is the music director and senior Drew Maggio is the assistant director. Senior Megan Cox serves as stage manager.
Performances will take place at 10am and 2pm on November 12 and again at 2pm on November 13 at Bondrant Hall in Preston Hall on Radford’s main campus. General admission is $8 and $4 for children. Radford University students can enter for free. Tickets for faculty and staff are $6.
