ASME NEWS
CIE Division Poses Hackathon Problem to Students
A roundup of recent Society events.
HACKATHON WINNERS USED CLUSTERING ALGORITHMS TO ACHIEVE RESULTS
ASME Computer and Information in Engineering (CIE) Division held its 2024 Hackathon hosted by the International Design Engineering Technical Conference & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference in Washington, D.C. The on-site and virtual preconference event provided students a hands-on opportunity to learn how data science and machine learning techniques are used to solve real-world engineering problems.
Engineering student participants competed for cash prizes while tackling complex challenges. After a week-long sprint, the team of Mutahar Sadfar and William Jabbour from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, used image transformers and clustering algorithms to group images together based on visual similarity to take first place.
Seven teams submitted answers for the FactoryNet dataset problem, a challenge presented by UES Inc., a Blue Halo company, and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). This problem tasked the participants to contribute to the early stages of a growing labeled image dataset, FactoryNet. Specifically, competitors cleaned up the human annotated labels into meaningful classes and tested if those classes could be used to create machine learning models.
The task of data sanitization is not a new one in the data science world, but modern transformer models and large language models (LLMs) have the potential to change and accelerate the process. Though the students’ solutions varied in method, the overall submissions showcased excellent strategies of how best to leverage cutting edge tools and get a leg up on the competition for such an open-ended problem.
Erik Braham, digital manufacturing research scientist at UES, presents the second-place for the FactoryNet hackathon problem award to Nazanin Mahjourian of Michigan Tech.
ASME LIFE FELLOW RECEIVED COMMENDATION
University of Connecticut (UConn) Professor Emeritus Lee Langston was recently presented a proclamation to recognize his outstanding contributions and enduring legacy. “UConn Forum: Economic Engine of a Thriving Connecticut” brought together leaders, researchers, and public officials and it was there that Radenka Maric, the school’s president, presented the proclamation from Connecticut’s governor, Ned Lamont.
An ASME Life Fellow, Langston received a BSME from UConn in 1959, and an MS in 1960 and a Ph.D. in 1964 from Stanford University. He was with Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in Connecticut as a research engineer working on fuel cells, heat pipes, and jet engines. Langston joined the UConn mechanical engineering faculty in 1977, becoming a full professor in 1983. At UConn he taught graduate and undergraduate courses in heat transfer and fluid mechanics, with research activities involving the measurement, understanding, and prediction of secondary flow in gas turbines. He served as interim dean of the School of Engineering and became Professor Emeritus in 2003.
At ASME he has served as editor of the ASME Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the ASME International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI). In recent years, Langston has written a quarterly column and an annual review of the gas turbine industry for IGTI and Mechanical Engineering magazine and the Technologue column for American Scientist.
Langston’s career included helping to develop the fuel cells that powered Apollo 11 to the moon. He also was part of a team that helped install the first solar panels at the White House. And Langston pioneered gas turbine technologies now used worldwide, including at UConn’s Cogeneration (CoGen) Central Utility Plant.
UConn President Radenka Maric (right) stands with Professor Emeritus Lee Langston. Photo: UConn/Sydney Herdle
ASME TO HELP DECARBONIZE UKRAINE’S STEEL WITH SMRS
ASME has been selected as one of four implementers to support the Clean Steel Program in Ukraine, a key effort under the Foundational Infrastructure for the Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) Program launched in 2019.
FIRST is a multiagency U.S. government initiative that provides capacity-building support to partner countries exploring the potential for small modular reactors (SMRs) and other advanced nuclear reactor technologies. It helps countries meet their clean energy needs consistent with the highest nuclear security, safety, and nonproliferation standards, in addition to helping partner countries safely and responsibly build a small modular reactor or other advanced reactor program.
Under Clean Steel, ASME will support the development of a roadmap to rebuild, modernize, and decarbonize the Ukrainian steel industry with secure and safe SMRs.
Ukrainian Minister of Energy German Galushchenko and U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins announced the roadmap project at the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP29) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Baku, Azerbaijan. They were joined by U.S. Department of Energy Acting Assistant Secretary of Nuclear Energy Dr. Michael Goff, H.E. Yuriy Husyef, the Ambassador of Ukraine to the Republic of Azerbaijan, Director of Argonne National Laboratory Dr. Paul Kearns, and Neil Wilmshurst, Chief Nuclear Strategy Officer of the Electric Power Research Institute.
Ultimately, the roadmap produced by this project will provide a detailed description, relevant analyses, and specific actionable steps for using secure and safe SMRs to power clean steel manufacturing in Ukraine.
A technician works at the main blast furnace of the Zaporizhstal steel mill in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Photo: Getty Images
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