NC State University Chancellor Randy Woodson visited the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Monday as a part of his yearly visit to the College of Engineering.
Chancellor Woodson started his visit in the first floor atrium of Engineering Building 3 (EB3), where he first met with several of MAE’s incredible student teams. He talked with representatives from the High-Powered Rocketry Club, the Aerial Robotics Club, and Pack Motorsports Formula and Baja teams. The students showed the chancellor their rockets, airplanes and cars and showed him exactly how MAE is the embodiment of Think and Do at NC State.
From the first floor atrium, Chancellor Woodson walked to the High Bay Annex building behind EB3 where the Pack Motorsports teams recently relocated their workshops. The chancellor got to meet the Solapack team and talk to MAE students about the process of building their award winning cars. He also had one very important question for the Formula team in particular: “How fast does it go?” (if you are curious, the answer is about 90 miles per hour).
The chancellor then toured MAE’s senior design workshop. “this is our pièce de résistance,” MAE department head Dr. Srinath Ekkad told the chancellor as they entered the workshop. Here, Chancellor Woodson got to see the space that MAE students use to design, manufacture and build the culmination of their education during their senior design classes.
The tour then continued on to several of MAE’s research labs, where Chancellor Woodson heard from students and faculty about the cutting edge research done in EB3. He first visited Dr. Arun Kumar Kota’s lab, where Dr. Kota and his students research surface and interfacial science to conduct both fundamental and applied research in the areas of bio-inspired surfaces, super-repellent surfaces, chemically patterned surfaces and stimuli-responsive surfaces.
Then the chancellor went upstairs to EB3’s third floor to visit Dr. Hao Su’s Biomechatronics and Intelligent Robotics Lab, where Dr. Su and his students showcased their work with multiple soft, surgical and humanoid robots.
Before going upstairs to visit MAE’s upstairs neighbors, the Joint Biomedical Engineering Department for UNC and NC State, Chancellor Woodson finished the tour by hearing from Dr. Ekkad and Associate Department Head Dr. Kara Peters about some of the incredible research MAE graduate students are conducting.
MAE extends its gratitude to all of the students, staff and faculty that represented the work we do with pride, and also to Chancellor Randy Woodson for his continued support for our department and the College of Engineering; come back any time, maybe next time we’ll let you drive the Formula car.