Holly Cluff

Friday was the night.

Each year, BYU Capstone partners with government agencies, corporate leaders, humanitarian organizations, and entrepreneurs to provide opportunities for senior-level engineering students in Computer, Electrical, Manufacturing, and Mechanical Engineering to participate in real-world engineering challenges. Top engineering faculty and skilled industry mentors guide students through the design and development process. This year, teams of Capstone students are participating in 53 unique projects across a wide variety of industries.

Boy Scout camp has a cherished place in American hearts for its role in teaching the skills essential to life: wilderness survival, first aid, citizenship, and - if you’re PhD student Jakob Kunzler - calculus and differential equations.

Mark Ruzindana cites a few people as his inspirations: his parents and sisters, professional rock climber Tommy Caldwell, and Batman.

At the same conference where grad student Farah Arabian took home third place for her presentation on mobile systems last week, another ECE student placed for his presentation on the self-driving car platform featured on BYU’s YouTube channel and the recent department tours.

You might recognize her name. In 2018, she won the First Place Graduate Student Award at the International Telemetry Conference (ITC), and last year she won the Myron Hiram Nichols Telemetry Spectrum Award at the ITC. This month, Farah Arabian - a PhD student studying under Dr. Rice - received another award: third place in the engineering track at the Intermountain Engineering, Technology, and Computing Conference (i-ETC) for her paper “Who’s on First in 5G Mobile Networks: Equalizers or Polarization Diversity Combiners?”. She compared two mobile phone architectures to see which outperformed the other, specifically observing how the order of combining and equalization in signal processing affected the outcomes.

Nearly ten years after publishing the first edition of Numerical Methods for Engineering, Professor Karl Warnick has published its new and improved successor. Numerical Methods for Engineering, 2nd Edition has new material and improvements based on a decade of feedback from students who have used the book.

For the past two weeks, the reopened Harvey’s Cafe has been blessing (or cursing) the Engineering Building with the smell of bacon, but that’s not the only change in the air. Throughout the building, doors remind visitors to wear face coverings, the floors direct them to stand six feet apart, and the bathroom sinks re-emphasize the timeless need to wash those hands. Not only does it look different, but for students and professors in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, it feels different. The classes have turned upside down.

The start of the academic year brings with it advancements, awards, and recognitions for outstanding faculty members. The university conference, which transpired the final week of August, honored this year’s worthy faculty and staff members on both university and college levels.