Incoming Engineers Are Top of the Class
Tufts School of Engineering welcomes the 191 engineering students of the class of 2011. In this class, 28% are female, 24% are students of color, and 7% are international students. A record number of students applied to the school this year, with an acceptance rate of one-third. The engineering student population is truly top-drawer with a mean high school rank of 9%. Eighty-two percent of students are in the top decile of their high school classes. Class average SAT scores put these engineers ahead of the pack with verbal scores averaging 686 and math 728 (total: 1414 out of 1600).
Engineer Jason Kapit's Mission to Mars
At 5:26 a.m. on August 4, 2007, mechanical engineering graduate student Jason Kapit stood under the dark, pre-dawn Florida sky with a group of scientists, engineers and space enthusiasts to witness the launch of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Phoenix will help NASA scientists determine whether Mars could support life by understanding the history of water on the fourth planet from our Sun.
Learn more about the Phoenix Mars Mission
Summer Engineering Student Researchers
With a $3,500 scholarship, the Tufts Summer Scholars program is a university-wide initiative that gives students a chance to be on the front line of discovery.
Get Tubular (braiding) with Diana Mark (E'08)
Silk is one of the strongest and most flexible materials available to the biomedical engineering community. By braiding many strands of silk together, engineers can weave a sheath that could surround blood vessels for added strength, or it might be used to support discs between the backbone vertebrae. Diana Mark, with guidance from senior lecturer, Gary Leisk, worked on designing the braiding machine that could generate these structures.
Read more about braiding silk
Discover Nanotechnology with Nick Horelik (E'09)
The tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) is a plague to farmers of tobacco, tomato, pepper and cucumbers. In the wild, the RNA-based virus discolors leaves, creating a mosaic of light and dark green patches, and subsequently destroys crops. But in the lab, the small, rod-shaped viruses serve as "nanotemplates"-or the frameworks upon which engineers, like Nick Horelik, can bind different molecules and other functional nano-sized chemical groups. "These viruses are actually biologically derived nanotubes with great potential," said Nick's advisor, assistant professor Hyunmin Yi.
Know more about nanotech
Robert J. Hannemann to Lead Tufts Gordon Institute
As of Sept. 1, 2007, Robert J. Hannemann has joined the community at Tufts University's School of Engineering as the new director of the Tufts Gordon Institute. He succeeds Arthur Winston, director of Tufts Gordon Institute since 1992. Hannemann will have a secondary appointment as a professor of the practice in the department of mechanical engineering at the school.
Read more about Rob and TGI
Jamie deLemos Takes on Toxins on the Navajo Nation
In North America, many people think of clean drinking water and uncontaminated land as a birthright. In Navajo Nation, access to these basic needs isn't as easy to come by. Forty years of uranium mining has created an environmental justice nightmare that scientists and researchers like Jamie deLemos, a doctoral candidate in the Water: Systems, Science, and Society program, are working to redress.
Learn more about deLemos' research