At the ARC Lab, they got to do some hands-on antenna prototyping using copper tape and a Tektronix VNA. Kaino designed a Yagi-Uda antenna operating at 1.5 GHz, and Sophia designed a 3 GHz microstrip patch antenna. Both students got to solder, interpret S-parameters, and iterate through their designs to improve performance. Once their antennas were working well on the VNA, they took them into the anechoic chamber to measure radiation patterns.

The students were able to explore the anechoic chamber and see their antennas' performance in real time. It was wonderful to share the fun of electromagnetics with a couple of incredible students and see their understanding of concepts develop.

Nov 2024 | News

Two high school students, as a part of the LEAD SUMMET program, began their lab shadowing experiences in the ARC LAB. Sophia and Kainoa are part of the inaugural class of high school students invited to shadow in various research labs. As an expansion of SUMMET (Summer Multicultural Engineering Training), these students learn to read papers, use lab equipment, and will present their experiences to next year's SUMMET students. First, they visited Connor Denny in the thin-film deposition lab in Coorstek. Connor is a quantum engineering graduate student doing research on low-noise amplifiers and is involved in research under Dr. Aaen. There, they learned about wire bonding, integrated circuit fabrication, and even got to use the Science Microwave to perform plasma etching on a borosilicate sample.

May 2024 | News

Matthew Dodd, Charles Vath, Nelson Angles, Silje Ostrem, Grace Martienz, Elizabeth Peterson, Kenny Hora, Lisa Elmiladi, Trevor Wolf and Drs. Atef Elsherbeni, Peter Aaen, and Jamal Rostami members of the ARC research group at Mines participated in the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Symposium, held in May 2024 in Orlando. They presented 6 papers (Matthew Dodd, Charles Vath, Nelson Angles, Silje Ostrem, Kenny Hora, Lisa Elmiladi), co-shared four sessions (Charles Vath, Nelson Angles, Silje Ostrem, Elizabeth Peterson) and all managed the conference registration and help desk. Four other members participated in the presented work (Nolan Grant, Cameron Evanovich, Collin Kringlen, Trevor Wolf), but could not attend the conference.

April 2024 | News

One of our amazing combined students, Kenny Hora, presented at the GRADS symposium last month! GRADS stands for the ‘Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium’ hosted by Mines every Spring. This is a great opportunity to present your hard work and innovation to peers, faculty, and industry professionals who provide valuable feedback and collaboration opportunities. Dr. Atef Elsherbeni has been pivotal in helping and guiding these students through their research. Kenny presented with fellow students, Silje Ostrem and Charles Vath, on Sensor Data Relay System for Underground Mine Equipment. A novel system is developed to communicate data from sensor-enabled cutting tools (“smart bits”) on a continuous mining (CM) cutterhead to carry the data to the machine for control and maintenance management purposes. This will allow operators to understand the wear status of the rock cutting tools or bits in addition to the type of rock currently being drilled.