School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
September/October 2016

Aerospace Club earns honors at rocket competition

The Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association (YUAA) took second place in the payload category at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC), held in Utah in June. A major part of the IREC competition is the Space Dynamics Lab Payload Challenge, which calls for each team’s rocket to have a payload that contributes something of scientific value. The YUAA team used their rocket’s payload for a metagenomics survey, in which genetic material is taken directly from environmental samples for further study. In this case, the payload collected air samples at the rocket’s highest point. The students then ran polymerase chain reaction tests to check for bacteria in the samples. 

SEAS invited to White House symposium

As part of the National Week of Making, two SEAS representatives took part in a White House symposium, where they shared their thoughts on what makes a successful makerspace. Dr. Joseph Zinter, assistant director of Yale’s Center for Engineering Innovation & Design (CEID), and Thomas Kwan ’15MPhil, a fellow of Yale’s Advanced Graduate Leadership Program, were invited to the symposium, which was organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the MakeSchools Alliance, an organization of universities with makerspaces. Zinter and Kwan spoke to the group of academics and government officials on the value of academic makerspaces and the principles behind the operation of the CEID.

Scientists find environmental cost of oil sands

Two laboratories in the Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering found that oil sands operations, a major source of oil production in the last several years, emit very high levels of a critical class of air pollutants and pose risks to health and climate. Working with scientists from Canada, assistant professors Dr. Drew Gentner and Dr. Desiree Plata coauthored a study that found that oil sands operations in Alberta, Canada, are among North America’s biggest producers of human-caused secondary organic aerosols. The researchers noted that this could have a major impact on climate, since highly oxidized organic aerosols reflect incoming solar radiation. The results are published in the May 25 edition of the journal Nature.