Engineering

A portable solar array, which has 72 panels and measures 20 feet by 60 feet when fully deployed on a modified landscaping trailer cranked out enough juice to feed 150 people at a solar-powered turkey dinner after Hurricane Sandy.

NY, NY. (Nov. 12, 2014) – Columbia University has been awarded a grant from the Amgen Foundation that will provide hands-on laboratory experience to undergraduate students through the Amgen Scholars Program. This marks the 9th year that Columbia University will participate in the program, which aims to inspire the next generation of innovators by providing undergraduates with hands-on summer research opportunities at many of the world’s premier education institutions.

Columbia University today announced the establishment of an interdisciplinary NeuroTechnology Center with a mission to develop advanced optical, electrical and computational technologies for the study of complex neurobiological systems.

The computer science major assumed that her father, U.S. Army Reserve Captain Keith Robinson, who has been deployed for the past six months in northern Afghanistan, would not be able to attend her graduation while on active duty. As it turned out, Capt. Robinson was able to receive a leave from his unit and fly to New York, arriving shortly before the ceremony. As Ruby walked across the stage to shake hands with Dean Mary Boyce and President Lee C. Bollinger while receiving her degree, her father was waiting just off stage to congratulate her.

The more than 14,000 of Columbia’s undergraduate,…

Digital technology is about to add big data to the bird enthusiast’s traditional tools of binoculars and a field guide.

The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation has awarded its 2014-2015 “Magic Grants” to eight teams of students, faculty, alumni and post-docs from Columbia and Stanford Universities.

Robert Mark and George Deodatis, the Santiago and Robertina Calatrava Family Professor of Civil Engineering designed a life-size model of one of the 10-foot spires atop the neo-Gothic cathedral to see if it could withstand vibrations similar to those in 2011 that damaged several pinnacles, flying buttresses and a gargoyle, causing millions of dollars in damage to the structure. No one was injured.

Two years ago when an earthquake struck the Washington, D.C. area, Robert Mark got a call from the master mason at the Washington National Cathedral. “The building is falling around me!” he said.

In 1754 the original King’s College charter declared one of its missions to be teaching “everything useful for the comfort, the convenience and elegance of life.” It’s a goal that seems especially noteworthy as the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science celebrates its sesquicentennial by highlighting the ways it has fulfilled that mission in the past, its present day record of innovation and its plans for future growth.

A research team led by Ken Shepard and Lars Dietrich has demonstrated that integrated circuit technology, the basis of modern computers and communications devices, can be used for a most unusual application—the study of signaling in bacterial colonies. 

Nima Mesgarani, assistant professor of electrical engineering, is the lead author of a new study on how speech sounds are identified by the human brain, offering an unprecedented insight into the basis of human language.