EECS Student Dan Schimpf Wins Apple Design Award

Dan Schimpf is an award-winner, owner and operator of his own company, a member of two University bands (including the prestigious marching band) and a writer for the U-M Comedy Company.

As a third-year undergraduate working on a BSE in computer science, Dan Schimpf took first place in the inaugural student competition at the annual Apple Design Awards program, which acknowledges the best new software titles created for Mac OS X during the previous year. Schimpf received his prize for the development of MacJournal 2.1, a tool that keeps and organizes logs, diaries, journals, notes and ideas.

MacJournal 2.1 is a freeware application available for download at Schimpf’s company, Dan Schimpf Software (www.homepage.mac.com/dschimpf). “I don’t consider (program development) work at all,” Schimpf said. “As a college student, I would certainly enjoy a little extra money, but I don’t miss it that badly. I think charging for MacJournal would take some of the fun away from it.”

Schimpf’s other fun activities include watching and reviewing movies, playing tenor sax in the U-M Marching Band, and bassoon in the University Band, and writing for the U-M Comedy Company.

The award did more than bring Schimpf to Apple’s attention. It inspired Apple to hire him when he finished his fourth year. He went to work as a software engineer in the Professional Applications department at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. He said he’d “be working on Apple’s professional applications for editing video and producing DVDs, among other things.” So people will be hearing a lot from Schimpf for years to come.

Concrete Canoe and Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Bowling Ball Teams Roll to Big Wins

The 2002 concrete canoe, nicknamed “The Duke” in honor of John Wayne, is the lightest, strongest and fastest canoe a CoE team has ever fabricated. Fabricated with an advanced cementitious material, the canoe weighed only 140 pounds.

The CoE Concrete Canoe team faced a lineup of international competitors at the 2002 American Society of Civil Engineers Regional Concrete Canoe Competition at Michigan State University. Tri-captains Mary Ackley, Kristen Bennett and Amanda Heck led a team of students that shaped an advanced Engineered Cementitious Composite into the lightest, strongest and fastest canoe a CoE team has ever fabricated. The team finished second in the men’s and women’s distance races, third in the men’s and women’s sprint races, and first in overall durability for having the only crack-free canoe after competition—the first time U-M ever received this award.

Civil Engineering students participated in the Fiber-Reinforced Concrete (FRC) Bowling Ball Competition at the American Concrete Institute Convention in Detroit. An array of international squads showed up to build a fiber-reinforced, perfectly spherical concrete bowling ball of minimal weight, using a material designed to absorb maximum energy. CoE’s team, comprised of students Phil Barnes, Ken Maschke, Andrea Shear and Tien Shiao, used advanced Spectra® fibers to create the FRC bowling ball that brought home the top prize.

CoE Donates Human-Powered Submarine to Mystic Aquarium

When CoE students built the Neptune, an experimental two-person submarine, they had no idea that its unusual design and construction would create enough interest to warrant exhibition at the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration, perhaps the world’s most well-known maritime museum. The University presented the human-powered Neptune, often called the Yellow Submarine, to Mystic on a rent-free basis.

Aerospace Students Defy Gravity

Aerospace Engineering graduate student Michelle Woloszyn was floating on air, enjoying an experience that comparatively few people ever have: weightlessness.

With encouragement from their Aerospace Engineering instructor, Associate Professor Peter Washabaugh, students Lindsay Millard and Michelle Woloszyn responded to a request from the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), which was looking for students who wanted to experiment with deep-space optics in micro-gravity. JSC accepted Millard’s and Woloszyn’s proposal and invited them to Houston to participate with other universities in the “Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program,” during which they’d use a KC-135 to fly their experiment in a weightless environment.

Getting Ready: Millard and Woloszyn did their initial work on North Campus, creating their experiment with the help of Aerospace Engineering’s David Mclean (senior engineering technician), Tom Griffin (supervisor of laboratory services), Terry Larrow (instrument maker) and Chris Chartier (engineering technician). At JSC, Millard and Woloszyn spent 10 days preparing their experiment for launch and going through basic flight training that included time in a low-oxygen hypobaric chamber.

Lindsay Millard and Dave Hartkop take a break from their scientific investigations to clown around in a weightless environment.

Back on Earth: Millard said that more than anything, she and other students “learned that it was possible to propose, design, build and test a significant experiment as an undergraduate project team. The biggest hurdle on the road to being able to fly in the KC-135 was believing we had a chance of completing a successful project. The thrill of the flight was icing on the cake.”

Another thing Millard took away from the JSC experience was the feeling of being weightless. “It confuses your body,” she said. “You no longer feel which way is up or which way is down; you‘re forced to rely on your eyes and see it.

“When you rise over the top of a rollercoaster, most people feel their stomach rise or some similar sensation. Being weightless feels like that, only instead of going away when you head down the rollercoaster hill, the feeling stays.”

The Results: Millard and Woloszyn call the experiment successful but admit the information is preliminary. Their experiment tested the feasibility of a new type of deep-space telescope that would have a lens made of gas, not glass—an innovation that would make the telescope lighter and less expensive to launch, yet still have the “advantage of being huge.” “We determined that theoretically it is possible,” Millard said, “but more experimentation is needed to determine exactly how to implement the idea.” A CoE team has already submitted a follow-up proposal, and the atmosphere in Aerospace Engineering is charged with excitement.

Guthaus and Motter Win CADathalon

EECS PhD students Matt Guthaus and DoRon Motter attended the International Conference on Computer-Aided Design, curious about the “CADathlon,” the first of what will be an annual programming contest to test students’ computer-aided-design knowledge and challenge their problem-solving, programming and teamwork skills. They ended up walking away with the first prize.

In the CADathlon—a contest intended to showcase and develop the talents of top students in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) field—students from U-M, MIT, Berkeley, the University of Southern California, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas at Austin, Wisconsin and others received a Linux box, a C compiler and some standard libraries to use in solving a set of CAD-related problems. Judges—EDA experts from both academia and industry—rated teams on correctness and efficiency.

Guthaus and Motter captured first place by solving the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time. Teams received a penalty for any incorrect solutions. The competition was open to all graduate students specializing in CAD and who are currently enrolled full-time in institutions that grant PhDs.