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AE Senior Richard Linares Wins with Team Spirit

AE senior Richard Linares was named top participant in the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers’ (SHPE) Extreme Engineering Challenge, in Phoenix. Linares displayed his engineering ingenuity and leadership qualities while working as part of the winning Intel sponsored team to have created a water supply system for impoverished Latin American regions. The “Playground H2O” team, which competed against seven others, had 24 hours to “think green” while designing the water supply system. Both the individual and the team honors awarded Linares with a separate monetary prize.

The SHPE challenge helps develop and promote students’ engineering skills by simulating an accelerated working scenario with deadlines, presentations, reviews, and obstacles.

Linares is vice-president of the UB Chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS); external vice-president of the UB SHPE Chapter; and a research assistant in the MAE Advanced Navigations and Controls Lab. He intends to pursue a PhD with a concentration in Dynamics and Controls, with UB on his graduate school short list. Linares credits his mentors, AE Professor John Crassidis and MAE Assistant Professor David Forliti for their encouragement.

Kite Team Accomplishment at 2008 Niagara Falls International Kite Festival

(R to L): Thomas Leach (AE); Ben Richman (AE); Tina Rimbeck (SSI/EnvEng); Anthony Hughes (AE/ME); Chris Ford (AE); Carl Javier (AE)

UB Engineering’s AIAA Kite Team, mentored for four years by Richard Dutton (MS IE ’93), successfully completed the Homan Walsh Kite Contest re-enactment, named for the 15-year-old who got the first line across the Niagara Gorge in the original 1848 contest, helping construction begin on the area’s first Canada-US suspension bridge.

The team flew from Table Rock on the Canadian side to Terrapin Point on the American side, making their accomplishment especially impressive, since that distance is almost twice that covered by Homan Walsh, at the Whirlpool Bridge.

ISE Students Win American Society for Quality (ASQ) Kubisty Scholarships

Congratulations to UB undergraduate ISE students Ian Waite and Mayank Singla, and MS ISE student Estelle R. Kone, who won the ASQ Buffalo Section’s Walter F. Kubisty, Jr. Memorial Scholarship for their essays on “What Quality Means to Me and How I Plan to Promote It.” Presenting the scholarship checks were Deputy Erie County Executive Al Hammonds and ASQ Scholarship and Conference Chairman John Lupienski.