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  The College of Engineering remains in the forefront of the use of technology in the classroom, and has an Alliance Agreement with Fujitsu America.
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  A group of students in Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), led by Dennis Hong, professor of mechanical engineering, successfully designed a vehicle that allowed blind drivers to steer a retrofitted four-wheel drive dirt buggy. Virginia Tech was the only university to take on the challenge, and as a result, earned front page coverage in the "Washington Post", as well as an appearance on CBS Morning News.
  Blind Driver Challenge
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  Students in the Virginia Tech aerospace and ocean engineering department have won more aircraft, spacecraft and ship design awards than any other students in the country at the international group design competitions sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, major aerospace industries, and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.
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  Virginia Tech’s Green500 list is getting a refresh. Since its 2007 debut, the Green500 has ranked only the energy efficiency of the world’s 500 fastest performing supercomputers. Wu Feng, pictured, is one of the co-founders, along with Kirk Cameron, both of computer science.
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  Wayne Scales, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of Space@VT, has defied the odds and built a successful space research program at Virginia Tech.
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  Jeff Reed, who holds the Willis G. Worcester Professorship of Engineering, directs Wireless@VT, a research center that has and continues to develop revolutionary approaches to the field of wireless communications.
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  A team of Virginia Tech engineering researchers has won a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant to study knee ligament sprains at the micro-mechanical level. Principal investigator is Raffaella De Vita , an assistant professor in the engineering science and mechanics department and director of the Mechanics of Soft Biological Systems Laboratory.
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  A group of Virginia Tech students has produced more than 200 gallons of biodiesel as part of a senior design project for the department of mechanical engineering. The project is overseen by Foster Agblevor, right, associate professor of biological systems engineering for the College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
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  Padma Rajagopalan, an assistant professor in the department of chemical engineering, is the primary investigator in liver mimic research that eventually could form the basis for extracorporeal liver- assist devices.
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  Leigh McCue of AOE

Richard C. Benson

Dean of the College of Engineering

Paul and Dorothea Torgersen Chair

Virginia Tech's College of Engineering is comprehensive. We are the home to 13 departments with some 316 faculty, some 6000 on-campus undergraduate majors, and almost 2,000 graduate students. We have a strong reputation among our peers, and one reason is our innovative leadership in engineering education.

As Dean, I enjoy having our highly ranked college focused on what I call the “uncomfortable leading edge” of engineering education, a philosophy that has served our students well during the past several decades. By this statement, I mean that we are and should remain at the forefront of new technology –– be it in the classroom, the design team projects, or the research laboratories. Our “Hands-On, Minds-On” approach to engineering education provides our students with innovative curricula, complementing classroom instruction with unique design and build facilities.

As a case in point, in 1984 we became the first public institution to require our entering engineering students to have desktop computers. Subsequently, we changed our computer requirement from desktop to laptop, leading to many innovations in classroom instruction and team projects. In 2006, the College of Engineering's freshman class was required to have Tablet PCs. Our students and faculty have taken advantage of the Tablet PC's many advanced teaching features such as the ability to receive a copy of the instructor's notes, including in-class electronic ink annotations. The College garnered a 2007 Laureate Medal at Computerworld’s Honors Program for the development of its Tablet PC-based learning environment.

Having a laptop provides our students with continual access to notes, data, applications software and other information in class, group meetings, and study sessions. Network plug-ins and wireless network access are currently available in many classrooms and study areas.

Our Engineering Education research program was prominently featured for its cutting-edge work along with Purdue University's in the ASEE Prism Summer 2006 edition. The National Academy of Engineering has also identified our college as one of the leaders in engineering education due to our creation of the Department of Engineering Education.

We are constantly exploring the frontiers of computer technology in education. You may have heard of Virginia Tech's Math Emporium or System X. System X made supercomputing history when it was built in 2003, as it was the fastest supercomputer in a University setting at the time. Since then the Computer Science Department, led by faculty members Wu Feng and Kirk Cameron, have introduced the Green 500 list, ranking the energy efficiency of the world’s fastest performing supercomputers.

Integrating concepts of green engineering into our curriculum started in 1990 when only a handful of engineering colleges in the country (public or private) included aspects of sustainable engineering in coursework. As a current example, our students, led by three-time National Science Foundation Advisor of the Year recipient Doug Nelson, professor of mechanical engineering, are competing in Challenge X’s EcoCAR competition. The participating students are attempting to reduce the environmental impact of vehicles by minimizing the vehicle’s fuel consumption and reducing its emissions while retaining the vehicle’s performance, safety and consumer appeal.

Virginia Tech student teams participate in many exciting design competitions - and we tend to do extremely well. For example, a group of students in Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), led by Dennis Hong, professor of mechanical engineering, successfully designed a vehicle that allowed blind drivers to steer a retrofitted four-wheel drive dirt buggy. Virginia Tech was the only university to take on the challenge, and as a result, earned front page coverage in the "Washington Post", as well as an appearance on CBS Morning News, among other media accolades. Dr. Hong has since been named to Popular Science magazine’s 8th annual Brilliant 10.

Students in the Virginia Tech aerospace and ocean engineering department have won more aircraft, spacecraft and ship design awards than any other students in the country at the international group design competitions sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, major aerospace industries, and the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers.

One secret to our students' successes is a unique facility where our design teams work. Known as the Ware Lab, we invite you to visit this facility to learn more about ongoing student design projects and our exciting approach to hands-on, minds-on engineering.

Instead of starting a bioengineering department, we've hit on a very powerful and innovative way to engage in the fields of bioengineering and biotechnology. We partnered with Wake Forest University which has a premier medical facility to create a joint School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. The school offers MS and Ph.D degrees.

Virginia Tech is part of a consortium of schools that comprise the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), a major research and education collaboration supported by NASA through the Langley Research Center in Hampton. Other members of the consortium are University of Virginia, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation, Georgia Tech, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, and University of Maryland-College Park. Enrolled students may take classes from any of the participating universities.

Here on campus we're building the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) targeted to become a major, nationally prominent "home" for high-end, interdisciplinary research in the physical and engineering sciences. The first ICTAS building opened in 2007. A second building opened in 2008, and the third facility is under construction.

U.S. News & World Report typically ranks our undergraduate programs between 5th and 15th among all accredited engineering schools, and in the Top 10 among those at public universities.

Virginia Tech is among the great polytechnics of the United States, an impressive list with schools such as MIT, Caltech, Georgia Tech, and RPI, known for their depth and breadth of technical education.

I have highlighted just a few of the many exciting things going on in our College and on our campus. We hope you will read more about our College and departments on the Web--and visit us in person to take a tour of our facilities and programs.

For additional information on undergraduate programs and how to apply to the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, visit the Academic Affairs section of our website or e-mail: engrhelp@vt.edu.

For additional information on engineering graduate programs and admissions, go to research and graduate studies and individual departmental web sites or e-mail: bcrawfrd@vt.edu.

For general information about the College, send e-mail.

I invite you to read the current issue of my e-newsletter to find out about recent news in the College of Engineering.

Please consider joining us at Virginia Tech and writing in your own unique segment of our success story!

Richard Benson, Dean of the College of Engineering

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