College of Engineering News Room

Latest News

Engineering Faculty Leading USF’s COVID-19 Response Efforts
Nine projects led by engineering faculty make up almost a third of the 28 projects funded so far in the first two rounds of the USF COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants program created by the USF Pandemic Response Research Network.

Spring 2020 Outstanding Graduates
USF computer science and engineering students Willie McClinton and Zima Patel won the King O'Neal Scholar Award, while computer science and engineering student Meera Patel won the USF Global Citizen Award.

Improving Instruction with Coevolutionary Algorithms
Led by USF computer science and engineering Associate Professor Alessio Gaspar, this three-year, $377,012 National Science Foundation project aims to create evolutionary algorithms capable of developing software that will generate improved multiple choice questions.

NIH Grant Funds New Optical Biosensor Technology
The interdisciplinary, two-year National Institutes of Health project researches how near-infrared light propagation and optical analysis can be used to measure blood flow in the brain.

New Grant Uses AI to Enhance Remote Instruction
USF mechanical engineering Professor Autar Kaw received a $599,770 National Science Foundation grant to examine the effect of adaptive learning on flipped classrooms, where there is a mix of in-person and online instruction. 

USF Awarded $7.5 Million to Establish New National University Transportation Research Initiative
Selected from more than 50 applicants worldwide, the U.S. Department of Transportation selected USF to establish the National Institute for Congestion Reduction (NICR) within the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR).

Sudeep Sarkar Receives William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Award
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Chair and Professor Sudeep Sarkar was honored with a 2017 William R. Jones Outstanding Mentor Award by the Florida Education Fund's McKnight Doctoral Fellowship Program.

Two USF Engineering Professors Named 2020 NAI Senior Members
Five University of South Florida faculty members whose innovative work spans neurosciences to clean energy to engineering and pharmaceutical chemistry have been named by the National Academy of Inventors to its new class of Senior Members.

Engineers Defy a Stereotype with Music
The connection between engineering and music may surprise a lot of people, but it is a valuable piece of insight to those who perceive it.

Five Women in Engineering Win 2020 USF Golden Bull Awards
USF Golden Bull Awards is the highest honors and is given to 20 undergraduate and graduate students who exemplify exceptional leadership and service to USF. Five of this year's awardees are women of all degree levels in the College of Engineering.

Computer Science and Engineering New Faculty: John Murray-Bruce
Imperial College London grad and Boston University postdoc researcher John Murray-Bruce, Ph.D., is bringing his expertise in computational imaging to a faculty position, a new course and a new lab in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at USF.

Jeffrey Cunningham awarded AEESP Award for Outstanding Contribution to Environmental Engineering and Science Education
USF Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Jeffrey Cunningham, Ph.D., has been awarded the 2020 AEESP. This award is given annually to recognize excellence in teaching scholarship and/or professional society educational initiatives.

Fashioning Wearable Technology by Spinning Nanofibers
USF Electical Engineering professors Sylvia Thomas and Arash Takshi were recently awarded an NSF Advanced Materials program award to advance their research in improving wearable technology.

Research of USF Civil and Environmental Engineering professor in Sustainability Nature
Mauricio Arias, Ph.D., has spent the last decade conducting research into the effects of dams built on some of the most biodiverse rivers in the world, and his latest paper could help guide hydropower development in the Amazon.

Bullish Impacts at the Sub-Nanoscale
USF Mechanical Engineering assistant professor Michael Cai Wang was recently awarded an NSF CAREER Award and plans to use it to support his work in advancing nanoscale manufacturing.

Environmental Engineering Award for On-Site Wastewater Project
USF Civil and Environmental Engineering students and faculty are part of an EPA-funded, $2.5 million pilot wastewater treatment project that recently won an award from the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES). 

Electrical Engineering Professor Receives BEYA Educational Leadership Award
Sylvia Thomas, Ph.D., was presented the award during February's Black Engineer of the Year Awards conference for her work in forging new paths for students underrepresented in STEM.

Astronaut Gives Tips for Living on Earth or in Space
Retired astronaut Franklin "Story" Musgrave, Ph.D., visited USF after day one of the 2020 Engineering Expo to give a talk on his life and career, including becoming the only astronaut to fly aboard all five NASA space shuttles.

Scholarship Honors a Mother's Legacy
USF computer engineering alumna Lakecia Gunter recently created the Barbara Griffin Memorial Family Scholarship to increase students' access to STEM education opportunities, which she founded in her mother's name.

Lancor Donation Supports Medical Engineering Students
One of the first USF College of Engineering alumni to support the recently established USF Medical Engineering Department, Barbara Lancor (ME, '79) donated $25,000 in support of the success of today's medical engineering students at USF.

Doing Research in the Harshest Place on Earth: Antarctica
When it comes to learning how tiny sea creatures move through water, there is no place on Earth that USF mechanical engineering professor David Murphy won’t travel to, including the National Science Foundation's Palmer Station on Antarctica's Anvers Island.

USF Receives $1 Million NSF Grant to Support Underrepresented STEM Students
Through a five-year scholarship and research cohort program, an interdisciplinary team of USF faculty aims to improve the retention and academic experiences of STEM master’s students at USF and across the U.S.

USF Hosts International Internet of Things Conference
The two-day International Federation of Information Processing conference at USF gave IoT researchers an opportuntity to meet and share their work with fellow experts in the field from around the world.

Connecting the Future of Driverless Vehicles
Funded by a recent three-year NSF grant, USF Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Xiaopeng (Shaw) Li and his CATS lab research team are helping engineer the future of driverless cars for the masses and roadways that can support the tech.

Alum Uses Engineering to Create Public Art
Whether on display as a flaming spire constructed of rescue ladders in Clearwater or a wave made of used canoes in Lewiston, Idaho, Christopher Fennell’s creativity combines engineering skills and artistic talent to create assembled sculptures that are on public display in communities across the country.

Celebrating Women in Tech at the 2019 Grace Hopper Celebration
USF Computer Science and Engineering students and faculty share their experiences from this year's Grace Hopper Celebration and what makes the event so important to women in tech around the world.

Saving Lives by Floating with Hydrogen
Led by USF Biomedical Engineering professors Aydin Sunol and Chris Passaglia, USF engineering students in a senior capstone class recently patented a new personal flotation technology that deploys automatically and doesn't encumber the user.

USF and Jabil Announce $1 Partnership to Establish Jabil Innovation Institute
Located at USF Research Park, the institute will provide USF students and researchers with opportunities to work with Jabil engineers to solve current industry problems.

Seizing Engineering Opportunities
Having completed a summer internship with Intel, USF Mechanical Engineering Ph.D. student Ossie Douglas talks about his path to doctoral research and what it takes to succeed in engineering.

USF Joins National Effort to Develop a More Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty
College of Engineering Associate Dean José Zayas-Castro plays a leading role in several university-wide facets of the initiative that focus on recruiting and retaining diverse faculty, as well as helping recent USF Ph.D. graduates obtain academic positions.

Turning Trash into Cash and Landfill Waste to Renewable Energy
A bioenergy startup founded by USF Chemical Engineering professors Babu Joseph and John Kuhn was awarded a $2.3 million Department of Energy grant to continue research into creating synthetic diesel from agricultural waste and trash at landfills.

Using Visualization to Gauge Uncertainty
Computer Science and Engineering Department professor Paul Rosen, Ph.D., was recently awarded an NSF CAREER Award and works with data visualization to help improve decision-making processes.

New Institute of Applied Engineering Signs RDAs Worth $1.18M
USF's new Institute of Applied Engineering secured two research and development agreements with U.S. defense research organization DefenseWERX.

CARRT Community Partnership Gives Local Students Tech Career Experience
An internship program between the USF Center for Assistive, Rehabilitation and Robotics Technologies and Hands On Education provides students with a foray into engineering.

Hydrogels Research Featured in NANOscientific 
Responsive hydrogel coatings are extracted from pectin polysaccharides extracted from orange peels and cacti have many uses.

Bulls-EYE Mentoring Puts Tampa Middle Schoolers on Path to Engineering
Bulls-EYE Mentoring continues to help local students explore engineering fields and is positioned to expand as a long-term pipeline for future USF engineers.

Turning Coastal Communities Into Clean Water Converters
A team of USF Civil and Envrionmental Engineering researchers received a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation grant to carry out a project that could change how coastal communities source clean water.

USF Engineering Students Spend Summer at Intel, Twitter, Cummins
Three engineering students from different majors discuss how their summer internships with industry leaders have improved their experience in their fields.

Norma Alcantar's Cactus Research Could be Used for Oil Spill Clean up  
According to chemical engineer Norma Alcantar from the University of South Florida, the gluey centre of prickly pear cacti might be the answer. She told MJ that it was just an offbeat idea at first but when the extract was shaken in a test tube with a sample of crude oil, “within 15 to 20 seconds, the oil had disappeared entirely.”

Medical Engineering Researchers Receive New Drug Patent 
Robert Frisina, PhD, chair of the USF Medical Engineering Department and director of the USF Global Center for Hearing and Speech Research, and his team were awarded a U.S. patent for his theory that you can slow hearing loss by combining supplements for the hormone aldosterone with anti-inflammatory medications, such as aspirin or ibuprofen.

Making Microbes that Transform Greenhouse Gases  
Researchers at the University of South Florida are harnessing the power of human physiology to transform greenhouse gases into usable chemical compounds – a method that could help lessen industrial dependence on petroleum and reduce our carbon footprint.

NEWGenerator Will Have Global Impact  
Professor Daniel Yeh's poop-powered generator converts human waste into power.

Professors Thomas and Frisina Named Senior Members by the National Academy of Inventors  
Five University of South Florida faculty members whose innovative work spans neurosciences to clean energy to engineering and pharmaceutical chemistry have been named by the National Academy of Inventors to its new class of Senior Members.

Preserving Biodiversity Through Mathematical Optimization with NSF Award
Industrial engineering professor Hadi Charkhgard received a National Science Foundation Computer Research Initiation Initiative award to help the U.S. Geological Survey preserve biodiversity around the country through versatile algorithms.

Kyle Reed Receives Fulbright to Lead "East Meets West in Rehabilitation Sciences" Research
Mechanical engineering professor Kyle Reed will spend the next academic year as a Fulbright scholar helping students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University position their capstone rehabilitation sciences projects for commercialization.

USF Receives its 8th NSF Bridge to Doctorate Award
Led by the College of Engineering and the Office of Graduate Studies, the University of South Florida was awarded a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) Florida-Georgia Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (FGLSAMP) Bridge to the Doctorate grant to support underrepresented students in pursuit of science, engineering and mathematics Ph.D. degrees.

USF College of Engineering Receives ASEE Bronze Award for Inclusivity
The award recognizes the college as a national leader in supporting diversity and inclusion in its programs, community outreach efforts and initiatives, and the award is the highest given this review cycle. 

Ysela Llort is 2019 Florida Transportation Hall of Fame Inductee
Center for Urban Transportation Research Chair Ysela Llort has more than three decades of transportation leadership experience in Florida and Washington D.C. and will be the first woman to be a Florida Transportation Hall of Fame inductee.