Auburn University is in the process of developing a strategic plan for this decade that will outline our institution's aspirations and mission, define its distinctive initiatives and identify priorities. This is an exciting process and an important one for this institution.

The College of Engineering and its departments initiated a similar planning process a number of years ago. The resulting documents outlined a roadmap for our future that has helped bring faculty and staff together as a team towards a common vision and allowed us to identify the funding levels needed to bring that vision to fruition.

This financial vision goal has guided our campaign fundraising efforts and will continue to guide us post-campaign. Progress to date has already allowed us to make measurable progress in the implementation of our strategic plan.

I am excited that the University is undertaking a similar strategic planning effort and encourage you to learn more about the process. This effort is not only critical to the future health of Auburn University, but to the College of Engineering as well.

Larry Benefield
Dean, Samuel Ginn College of Engineering

Feature Story

Ensuring Food Safety at 2008 Summer Olympics

When more than 10,000 athletes and 22,000-plus international journalists converge on Beijing, next August for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, an AU faculty member will have played a pivotal role in helping ensure that the foods they are served are safe to eat.

Yifen Wang, an assistant professor in AU's interdisciplinary biosystems engineering program, was one of 15 food-safety authorities named to a Beijing Olympics food security panel in 2005. That international group of experts took on added importance this year amid growing global concerns over repeated recalls of contaminated Chinese food products.

Yifen Wang

Wang, a Shanghai native who joined the AU faculty in 2004, has focused his research on food safety issues for 15 years. The Beijing Food Safety Administration and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games sought him as a board member on the basis of his expertise on food safety and his fluency in Chinese and English. Wang is one of four U.S. representatives on the panel and is the board's designated liaison for the English-speaking members. Other members include food safety authorities from China, Australia, the European Union and the World Health Organization.

Since its establishment, the group's main charge has been to write the protocol manual for the rigorous food safety program for the 14-day August 2008 games. The Beijing Organizing Committee announced recently that this program will rely heavily on the use of Global Positioning System and radio-frequency identification technology to monitor and track all Olympic food products through production, processing and distribution. Wang was instrumental in the committee's adoption of the RFID system.

The board has met in Beijing annually since 2005 and will convene for the final time next summer before the Olympics.

Wang, who holds a doctorate in food engineering from Washington State University, said the panel is devoting extensive efforts to develop effective standards. "There is great pressure on us to ensure that all foods that enter the athletes' village, media villages, main press center and international broadcasting center at the games are safe," he said.

He added, "We are confident that the security program that has been established is a very good, highly effective system."

Student Stories

Wireless Engineering Students Win $10,000 in Design Challenge

A team of students from Auburn University's wireless engineering program placed first in this year's North American region in the Cypress Innovator Design Challenge. Representing both the hardware and software options of the wireless program, the students received $10,000 collectively for their innovative scoring systems for fencing matches, utilizing Cypress semiconductor programmable radio on chip (PRoC) devices. Read more >>

Research Stories

Improving MRI Comfort and Cost

Stan Reeves, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded a $340,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health. The grant will allow Reeves, principal investigator on the project, to develop a new way to collect and assemble a special type of MRI imagery. Collaborator Don Twieg at the University of Alabama at Birmingham will assist with data acquisition and modeling. Read more >>

More research stories

Outreach Stories

Homewood Middle Wizards Take on Big Kids with Robots

Building a moving, maneuverable robot from a box of seemingly unrelated objects may sound like a daunting task for a middle-schooler ? or almost anyone, for that matter ? but Christopher Campbell is unfazed.."

Campbell is part of a team of students at Homewood Middle School participating for the first time this year in BEST, also known as Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology, a robotics competition sponsored by Auburn University?s Colleges of Engineering, and Science and Mathematics, designed to teach middle and high school students to use technology and solve problems. Read more >>

More outreach stories

Alumni Stories

Homecoming BBQ - A Winning Event

This year's Engineering Homecoming BBQ, hosted by the Cupola Engineering Society, attracted record crowds to the Davis Aerospace Engineering Hall Patio. Alums had a chance to visit with students and faculty, and to view displays and demonstrations. Read more >>

More alumni stories

In Memorium

Former AU President William Walker Dead

William F. Walker, who served as Auburn University?s president from 2001-04, died in August of complications from cancer. He was 69. Read more >>

More in memorium stories

Program Stories

CSSE Hosts Third Annual World Usability Day

Auburn University's Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering Department recently hosted World Usability Day.

The event - one of more than 135 in 35 countries - demonstrated that the things people interact with and experience every day can work better. Read more >>

Faculty Stories

Glibert and Holland Honored as National Role Models

Juan Gilbert, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering, and Florence Holland, Special Assistant to the Associate Provost for Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, were honored in Sept. as National Role Models by Minority Access, Inc at its 8th National Role Models Conference. Read more >>

More faculty stories

Seminars

Seminars

Fall 2007 has been a banner year for seminars with speakers addressing topics as varied as fog chemistry and air pollution to automotive interior design to the use of engineered tissues to replace damaged bladders and ears. Read more >>