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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Robotics and Sustainable Automation

Ever thought about building a robot? During this event, students will learn about how mechanical and electrical engineers are automating the future with Cal State LA faculty.

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9:00 AM - 10:20 PM

FACULTY SPEAKERS

	He Shen, Ph.D. Dr. Shen received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with the Best Dissertation Award from the College of Engineering and Computer Science in 2014 from the University of Central Florida. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and his research interests are in robotics, control systems, dynamics, and instrumentation. He is the founder and director of the Robotics Laboratory and an advisor of two student organizations – American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) at Cal State LA. He is also a recipient of the 2017 “Exceptional Levels of Service to Students Award” and 2020 “Faculty Mentor Honoree” at Cal State LA.
	Chris Bachman, Ph.D. Dr. Bachman is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Cal State LA. He received his B.S. (2010) and M.S. (2012) from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) and his Ph.D. (2017) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT he performed research under the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the MIT Mechanical Engineering Department Fellowship. He has performed research in batteries, fuel cells, supercapacitors, wind energy, and engineering education. His work has been featured in Nature Materials, Nature Communications, and Chemical Reviews, and has been cited over 700 times in the previous five years. He has taught experimental methods, control systems, and mechanical design at UC Davis; physics and calculus at MIT; fluid mechanics and mechanical vibrations the Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT); and Introduction to Engineering and Technology, Introduction to Mechanical Design, Thermodynamics, and Senior Design at Cal State LA. He also currently advises both the Baja SAE and Formula SAE competition teams, directs the ECST Makerspace, and runs the Sustainable Technology Lab researching inexpensive and safe energy storage.
	Charles Liu, Ph.D. Dr. Liu is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cal State LA. Starting from 2019, he also serves as the chair of the Department. His research interests include parallel architecture, embedded architectures, high performance computing for signal processing, and image processing, and message passing based parallel algorithms. He has extensive experience in minority education and research in the discipline of computer engineering. He has been collaboratively acquired over $12,000,000 funding from NASA, NSF, and National Argonne Lab for research of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) distributed control, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) design, space science and STEM education, and Advanced Driver's Assistance Systems (ADAS). He has been advised over 10 teams of senior design projects and over 30 master theses as a faculty member at Cal State LA.

10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

INDUSTRY SPEAKERS

	Rosa Cortes-Mejia Rosa Cortes Mejia a first generation DACA student studying Mechanical Engineering at Cal State LA. Rosa came to the US when she was 2 years old. She comes from a strong working family that works tirelessly every day. Her parents raised her to accept that nothing comes easy and that patience, dedication and hard work is the key to everything. With this mindset, she focuses on seeking a better life, not just for herself and her family but for her community as well. Both her parents did not complete middle school, so it was difficult for her to choose a major when she applied to universities. She chose engineering because she enjoys learning new things, likes to understand how things work, and why they are important. Studying a STEM career is a challenge however, nothing great comes easy. These struggles have guided her to several opportunities, one being Honda R&D Americas, where she is an intern this summer. Becoming an engineer is not her only goal as she plans to continue to give back to her community. This is how Rosa believes we can rise together in helping everyone you can to succeed.
	Rubi Mora Rubi Mora graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cal State LA in 2018. She then moved to Michigan to join General Motor’s TRACK employee program. As part of this program, she has had the opportunity to explore different roles among those being a Systems Safety Engineer, a Systems Integration Engineer, and lastly her current role as a Sensing Systems Architect in Automated Driving. Before becoming an engineer Rubi only knew two things, that she liked science and that she wanted to earn a college degree. Through some googling, reading Wikipedia, and talks with her cousin (a mechanical engineer), she then chose to pursue engineering as her career.
	Sara Sallam Sara Sallam graduated from Cal State LA with a dual degree in mechanical and manufacturing engineering. She currently works as a project manager for Otis Elevator where she manages installations for new construction projects. In my free time, I enjoy traveling, hiking, and mentoring people.