ASME NEWS
Students and Early Career Engineers Attend ASME’s E-Fest
A roundup of recent Society events.
ASME’S VIRTUAL E-FEST TECH CONNECT 2025
Engineering students and early career engineers from around the globe attended the virtual event, ASME’s E-Fest Tech Connect. Formerly E-Fest Digital, the event included career and professional technical and soft skill sessions, networking opportunities, awards celebrating engineers who are making a difference, and live finals of the Extended Reality Challenges. And for the first time ever, collaborative sessions brought ASME Digital Landmarks to E-Fest. Attendees experienced five incredible engineering milestones through fully immersive digital twin models.
Mechanical engineers and the role they take in transforming healthcare took center stage as Gopika Ganga Nair, process and program engineer at GE Healthcare India, examined innovations, designing life-saving medical devices, and optimizing manufacturing processes. She made it clear that engineers continue to play a crucial role in improving global healthcare outcomes and explained that technology and products healthcare professionals use every day are part of mechanical engineers’ scope of work.
One of the day’s featured sessions included, “Live from EFx NDU—AI in Fighter Jets—The Rise of Machine Pilots.” This session looked at a future where AI is not just an assistant but a dominant force in aviation, shaping flight control, decision-making, and air combat. Joe Bitar, a retired fighter pilot and flight instructor, explained, “Imagine for a moment, a fighter jet thinking and making life or death decisions without a human in control.”
Stay in touch with ASME and learn more about upcoming virtual events, student competitions, and in-person events. Join the E-Fest mailing list.
Sonya T. Smith (left), chair of the ASME Foundation, presented the Kate Gleason Award to ASME Fellow Patricia Brackin, director of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s engineering design program. Photo: ASME
BRACKIN EARNS ASME AWARD
ASME has awarded the 2024 Kate Gleason Award to Patricia Brackin, director of the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s engineering design program and an ASME Fellow. Established by the ASME Foundation in 2011 in memory of the first woman to become a full member of ASME, the Gleason Award honors highly successful female entrepreneurs or those with a lifetime of achievement.
Sonya T. Smith, chair of the ASME Foundation, presented the award to Brackin at the Foundation’s third annual celebration of its progress toward empowering next generation engineers, a VIP event titled, “Reinventing the Future–Women Engineering Change.”
Brackin helped develop Rose-Hulman’s Home for Environmentally Responsible Engineering program, a living and learning experience for students interested in sustainability and humanitarian engineering. She also spent 11 years as director of the Institute’s Operation Catapult program, helping to introduce high school seniors to the wonders of science and engineering.
A member of Rose-Hulman mechanical engineering faculty since 1995, Brackin earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. She worked as a design engineer with the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company and has spent an academic sabbatical leave as a project engineer with Eli Lilly and Company.
DUESENBERG HYDRAULIC BRAKES RECOGNIZED AS A LANDMARK
Earlier this year at an official commemorating ceremony, ASME designated the Duesenberg Four-Wheel Hydraulic Braking System for automotive vehicles as a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. Nicole Kaufman Dyess, a member of the ASME Board of Governors, and Joseph Radisek of the ASME History and Heritage Committee presented a plaque to Sam Grate, curator of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum.
“Indiana was, and is, deeply involved in the aerospace and automotive industries,” said Mark Oehler, section leader for the Central Indiana Section of ASME. “We are honored to have Fred Duesenberg’s innovation recognized as an ASME History and Heritage site.”
Founded by brothers Frederick and August Duesenberg, the automobile company began as a manufacturer of champion race cars. When it decided to start producing automobiles for the consumer market, it brought over for the first time many innovations that had been piloted in racing. Among those innovations was four-wheel hydraulic brakes, which were included as a standard in its Model A.
For all its advanced technology and racing pedigree, the Model A was never a major seller. And its hydraulic brakes took time to catch on. But by the 1940s, even the mass-manufactured cars of the Big Three featured them. These brakes, together with power steering, made it easier for motorists to keep cars under control. Grate commented in the ASME.org story, “The Brakes That Got America Moving,” that manufacturers are still using hydraulic brakes. “They’ve obviously been changed and refined,” he said. “But the basic principles are still the same.”
© 2025 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.