Matthew Aguayo (left) and Aashay Arora pose atop the Agribusiness Center building at Arizona State University’s Polytechnic campus. Aguayo and Arora founded EnKoat, a startup venture developing coating materials that reduce energy consumption by insulating buildings outside heat or cold. Photographer: Connor McKee/ASU

EnKoat, an advanced materials venture founded by ASU alumni Aashay Arora and Matthew Aguayo, recently won a $225,000 National Science Foundation Phase I Small Business Innovation Research award, a highly selective seed funding program known as SBIR.

The award supports the further development of EnKoat’s energy-efficient building coatings. The venture’s energy-saving technology embedded in paint, plaster and stucco can save up to 30% on heating and cooling costs. The coatings can be applied to interior or exterior walls or roofs of new buildings, or as retrofits to existing structures.

Earning a Phase I SBIR award will allow EnKoat to demonstrate its coating technology’s feasibility and performance, bringing it closer to commercialization.

This year, EnKoat has earned a number of awards, including selection into the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator and the Joules Accelerator, and a runner-up award in the 2020 EarthX climate-tech prize competition.

As doctoral students, Arora and Aguayo worked with Narayanan Neithalath, a professor of civil, environmental and sustainable engineering, to develop a concrete pavement with phase change materials that is resistant to cracking when exposed to high temperatures. Phase change materials turn from solid to liquid and vice versa to store or release heat. This led Arora and Aguayo to explore how phase change materials could keep buildings cool, which resulted in their venture EnKoat.

Rashmeet Kaur Nayyar

Rashmeet Kaur Nayyar, a computer science doctoral student in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, is one of three ASU graduate students to have been awarded prestigious 2020 Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Awards by the American Astronomical Society. Santosh Harish, and Mansi Padave from ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration are the other two.

Chambliss medals recognize exemplary research by students who present at one of the poster sessions at the meetings of the AAS. Only six awards were granted nationwide to graduate students. The award is named after Carlson R. Chambliss of Kutztown University, who donated the funds to support the prize.

Nayyar is a member of the Autonomous Agents and Intelligent Robots research group. Her research focuses on key artificial intelligence principles to help build efficient systems that can reason, plan and act under uncertainty. In collaboration with co-adviser professors Sanchayeeta Borthakur and Siddharth Srivastava, she studies probabilistic approaches to automate physics-based detection and identification of intergalactic clouds.

“My experience at the American Astronomical Society meeting has opened my eyes to the immense potential of interdisciplinary collaborative research,” said Nayyar. “I believe in, and remind myself every day, that satisfaction in research comes with a struggle for discovery. I hope my work now, and in the near future, will help in advancing our understanding of the universe and its evolution.”

Nayyar’s achievement is particularly exciting because she won this award as a computer science student and presented her AI research on using first-order probabilistic logic for reliably inferring properties of intergalactic space far beyond our own galaxy.

“Not only did she succeed in explaining her work to an entirely different academic community, but she did it so well that she won an award for it! She’s helping build bridges across research communities in true ASU style,” said Srivastava.

“I joined ASU as a master’s student and got so fascinated by the study of artificial intelligence that I decided to pursue doctoral studies instead,” says Nayyar. “I hope that my work would someday motivate others enough to help them bring out the researchers within themselves.”

Written by Karin Valentine. media relations and marketing manager, School of Earth and Space Exploration

Congratulations to two Fulton Schools alumni out of The Polytechnic School — Jake Slatnick, technological entrepreneurship and management, and Eric Goodchild, electrical and embedded software engineering — who negotiated a $500,000, three-Shark deal on the October 14, 2019, episode of Shark Tank.

Sri Hari Jayakumar (left), Sheran Dass (second from left) and Akshay Kumar Dileep (right) pose with Amazon judges at Sunhacks 2019. Their team won the “Best Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Implementation on AWS” award from Amazon. Photo courtesy of Akshay Kumar Dileep

Sri Hari Jayakumar, Sheran Dass and Akshay Kumar Dileep, three Fulton Schools graduate students and friends from Chennai, India, took inspiration from their own college application experience to win an award in their first U.S. hackathon competition — Sunhacks 2019, hosted at ASU in September.

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The Fulton Schools Maroon team competes in the 2019 ASU Academic Bowl. Photo courtesy of Melissa Stine

Fulton Schools students put their heads together and earned second place in the 2019 Arizona State University Academic Bowl. The Maroon team students — Kai Yin, a computer science junior; Geoffrey Wong, a computer science senior; Kyle Xue, a double-major biomedical engineering and computer science junior; Jack Fleitman, a computer science senior; Colton Sowers, a computer science senior; and Brian Kozik, a computer science junior and captain of the team — will split $10,000 in scholarship money.

In classic College Bowl style, the ASU Academic Bowl pits teams of four against each other in lightning-fast question and answer rounds for trivia in political science, pop culture and everything in between. Top teams earn scholarship money and bragging rights.

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Calli Campbell operates a Molecular Beam Epitaxy machine.

Calli Campbell, a doctoral student studying materials science and engineering, won the Outstanding Student MBE Award for her oral presentation at the 20th International Conference on Molecular Beam Epitaxy in Shanghai, China. Out of 135 student presentations, Campbell earned one of the two Outstanding Student awards.

The conference is an international forum for sharing developments in the areas of molecular beam epitaxy research including techniques, new materials and devices. MBE is a method to deposit ultra-thin crystals used when creating nanotechnology and semiconductors, like solar cells or lasers.

Her presentation, “MBE growth and band-offset measurement of CdTe/InSb(002) heterovalent interface,” discussed using X-ray photoelectronic spectroscopy to look at the junction between MBE-grown crystalline compounds cadmium telluride and indium antimonide. This measurement technique offers a clearer picture of the relationship between the two materials. Together, the materials are used in items like solar cells, lasers and multi-color photodetectors.

On September 7, Campbell received the award for the quality of her research and presentation. She appreciates the support of her co-authors Xingye Wang and Robert Nemanich and her advisor Yong-Hang Zhang, under whom she is a graduate research assistant in electrical, computer and energy engineering.

“I am incredibly honored since this is a community full of people I learn from and look up to,” said Campbell.  “It is nice to know that our work at ASU is being well-received by the global MBE community.”

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Members of the INFORMS@ASU student chapter placed second at the Principal Cup after their presentation Friday, September 28, 2018.

The Principal Cup is an international operations research and management sciences analytics competition that challenges teams to develop an objective decision-making process to buy, sell or hold stocks which could be affected by emotional bias. Instead, the teams use historic data and operations research tools to decide what to do.

The team–Nathan Gaw, Logan Mathesen, Anson Park and Daniel Tran – developed kNN-Stock, a new decision framework that fuses machine learning and conventional stock-trading expertise to make optimal trade decisions.

The team will present their results to the sponsors of the competition, Principal Investment Firm in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Hello researchers!

Our Student Engagement team in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering is so excited to work with YOU during Fall 2018! We invite you to come drop by the Poly Engagement Welcome Party for food, connections, swag, and more. This is a great opportunity to connect with fellow students, faculty and staff who will be participating in FURI, GCSP, Fulton Student Orgs, and more. We look forward to seeing you there!

September 14, 2018
11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Academic Center 145, Barrett Lounge on Poly [map]

Sign up for event reminders: https://www.eiseverywhere.com/polyengagewelcome

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Sami Mian, master’s degree student in computer engineering, and Alaina Sutherland work on a component of a portable refrigeration unit.

On September 23-25, the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering’s Generator Labs hosted a 48-hour design challenge known as the Fulton Furnace Fallout — a Devil’s Invent event.

The event, sponsored in collaboration with the ASU Kern Project and the Rossum Rumblers student org, got its name and inspiration from a post-apocalyptic game series known as Fallout, which refers to the radioactive residual after a nuclear blast.

The teams designed and manufactured various technology and devices that could be put to use in a Fallout scenario.

Students’ creations were made from everyday materials and were incredibly varied.

One team built a replaceable shoe sole, the Marfind Sole-Saver, to protect and preserve the wearer’s original shoes and allow for various activities, such as running, hiking or snowy conditions.

Another team created an informational booklet — or a survival booklet — for building tools, such as a water purifier or charcoal respirator, that can be used by the layperson with little to no technical background.

Another team built a portable refrigeration unit.

Fostering an entrepreneurial mindset

The Fulton Schools’ aim in hosting events like this it to develop an entrepreneurial mindset among engineering students.

Brent Sebold, director of the Fulton Schools Startup Center, gets students pumped up for the design-build event centered around a nuclear fallout scenario.

What is a problem that needs to be solved? Who can I collaborate with to achieve my desired result? How can I communicate the value of my product to others?

These are all questions that students addressed in the course of the event, and will further address in the course of pursuing entrepreneurial endeavors.

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David Olivares (Left), Eddie Fernandez, Cole Seeley and Ryan Seeley, Future of Human Enhancement team members represent for the Human Machine Integration Lab. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

Speeding through Wells Fargo Arena in a jet pack and testing mental and physical agility in a Rube Goldberg-style challenge were two of the most popular interactive attractions at the ASU Emerge 2016 festival – and both came from engineering labs at the Polytechnic School.

Professor Tom Sugar and Associate Professor Sangram Redkar and their students exhibited innovations from the Human Machine Integration Lab, including the Pogo Suit, which is designed to diminish the physical toll of a backpack weighing up to 70 lbs., and the Spider Man Suit, which uses a vacuum pump and soft foam material cups to create a near air-tight seal between the device and a wall, allowing the user to scale just about any surface. Guests of the event were able to go for a jog across the Arena wearing a Jet Pack, a device designed to enable soldiers to run a four-minute mile. Small children tried on the suit without activating the power module, but felt they were able to run faster, nonetheless.

The Rube Goldberg-inspired Escape Challenge Room was born during a collaborative effort between ASU athletes and students in the National Science Foundation’s Broadening the Reach of Engineering through Community Engagement (BRECE) Scholars Program.  A two-day brainstorming workshop at the STEAM Labs at The Polytechnic School led to the innovative attraction, according to Assistant Professor Shawn Jordan, who noted that some of the athletes were also engineers.

“Initially, the students discussed what types of activities would lend themselves to an escape challenge,” Jordan explained. “When it was decided that each wall of the escape room should have a different project, the group broke up into teams to work out the details and build mini models.” The end result was a large, self-contained room inside the arena and a 10-minute escape challenge.

Jordan and some of the originating students were able to attend Emerge after the Polytechnic School’s Innovation Showcase, which was held on the same day. “It was exciting to see how different groups approached the challenge,” he said. “Some of teams would divide up and each take a wall, while others would approach each problem together.”

The activities overall served to get families with children excited about engineering. Even the “cheats,” as Jordan referred to the child-level peepholes in the Escape Room, got participants engaged in problem-solving thinking.

Super Cyborgs: The Future of Human Enhancement, presented by The Polytechnic School’s Human Machine Integration Lab 

Assistant Professor Sangram Redkar (left), Eddie Fernandez, Cole Seeley, Ryan Seeley and David Olivares show off the Pogo Suit, designed to lighten a backpack’s load by keeping it balanced. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

David Olivares demonstrates the Cooling Suit, designed to keep U.S. Air Force pilots cool in the cockpit. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

Assistant Professor Sangram Redkar with daughters Veena (age 8) and Rucha (age 4), Professor Joel Garneau (wearing a jetpack), Founding Director of the Emerge Center, and Professor Tom Sugar had almost as much fun as the guests when demonstrating the Super Cyborg Suits. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

The Future of Games: Rube Goldberg-style Escape Challenge Room, presented by The Polytechnic School’s STEAM Labs 

The Rube Goldberg-style Escape Challenge Room, designed by a team of ASU athletes and Polytechnic School STEAM Labs students, was a major attraction at Emerge 2016. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

Members of ASU’s 942 Crew, a Sun Devil Athletics Booster Club, team up to face the Escape Challenge Room during Emerge 2016. From left: Alex Linse, Kyle Bathe and Joey Palomarez. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

Kyle Bathe, a member of Sun Devil Booster Club 942 Crew, is amused by Joey Palomarez and Natalie McKee’s attempts to beat the Challenge Room’s puzzles. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU

942 Crew Booster Club member Alex Linse evaluates his Escape Challenge options. Linse and his team beat the 10-minute time limit. Photographer: Mihir Bhatt/ASU