Trio of gifts adds up to $40M for University of Denver

May 20, 2013, 1:07pm MDT UPDATED: May 20, 2013, 2:25pm MDT

By : L. Wayne Hicks
Social Media Engagement Officer / Digital Producer-
Denver Business Journal

Three donors have given the University of Denver a combined $40 million, with $27 million coming from former chancellor Daniel Ritchie.

The donations will allow DU to add an engineering and computer science building, which will house a new interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative. The new building also will be home to the new Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging.

Ritchie's gift is the largest in the history of the university, and is in the form of a working avocado ranch he owns in Montecito, Calif. DU's chancellor from 1989 to 2005 and chairman of the board of trustees from 2007 to 2009, Ritchie transferred ownership of the ranch to the university.

In honor of Ritchie's father, the new building will be called the Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science. The 110,000-square-foot building will be between the Newman Center for the Performing Arts and Olin Hall, on the south end of the campus.

The other donors to fund the new project are the estate of William Peterson, who graduated DU in 1969 with a degree in engineering; and Betty Knoebel, widow of Ferdinand "Fritz" Knoebel. DU's College of Business already is home to the Knoebel School of Hospitality Management.

The Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging will take up a floor in the new building.

For the original article, please visit  Denver Business Journal.

L. Wayne Hicks is Social Media Engagement Officer / Digital Producer of the Denver Business Journal, writes for the "Cultural Attache" blog, and compiles the daily "DBJ Morning Call" email. Phone: 303-803-9221.

University Announces Gifts To Fund New Engineering Building And STEM Initiative

By: Greg Glasgow
May 20, 2013
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An architect's model shows the new Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science between Olin Hall and the Newman Center for the Performing Arts.

Photo by: Wayne Armstrong, University of Denver

The largest financial gift in University of Denver history will go toward the construction of a new campus home for Engineering and Computer Science.

Chancellor Emeritus Daniel Ritchie has donated more than $27 million to build the Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, which will be named for his father. The 110,000-square-foot building on the south side of campus also will house the new Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging. It is slated to be completed in early 2015.
"We have wonderful faculty; we have wonderful students; what we don't have is wonderful facilities. That's the piece that's missing," Daniel Ritchie said at a May 20 press conference to announce the new building. "This will make a huge difference for the University, for the faculty and for our students."

The new building is part of a new interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) initiative at the University that will address societal needs of the 21st century and prepare globally competitive graduates for business and entrepreneurship. The Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science will bring together multiple complementary STEM activities and research already taking place on campus.

"These are the disciplines that are driving the growth of the worldwide economy," Chancellor Robert Coombe said at the press conference. "Today, with the U.S. economy rebounding, many of the jobs that are being created are in these disciplines, and we find that this is driving interest among students and among students yet to come to the University of Denver. There is an enormous wave in interest in STEM disciplines, and that wave is washing ashore at the University of Denver with considerable vigor."
Additional funding for the new engineering building comes from Betty Knoebel, widow of Denver food-service pioneer Ferdinand "Fritz" Knoebel, and the late Bill Petersen (BSEE '69), an alumnus of the DU School of Engineering. The gifts will allow the University to increase student scholarships, faculty support, industry partnerships and experiential learning programs.

According to Chancellor Coombe, the interdisciplinary focus will allow the University to dramatically expand its current engineering and computer science programs, with a vision of further developing mechatronics, bioengineering and software engineering curricula. Added capacity will allow the school to increase its faculty by more than 30 percent and enhance particular areas of scholarship and instruction. Coombe added that the initiative also responds to the shifting interests of college-bound graduates who are increasingly interested in sciences, math and engineering.

"The University of Denver will be on the cutting edge of developing a new breed of STEM graduates ready for the complex technological needs of the future," Coombe said. "Our students will create real-life solutions to real-life problems with an integrated approach to learning."...Read more on DU TODAY

DU2SRI Hangar at Front Range Airport

DU2SRI acquired a 4,500 sq. ft. hangar at the Front Range Airport, to be used as a hosting facility for our equipment, work space for research development and experimentation, and site for demonstrations and events. All the fleet\equipment has been moved to the hangar and DU2SRI is in the process of setting up several workstations inside the hangar along with a small machine shop to support the research needs of the Institute.

Posted by:   | on March 21, 2013

Eyes in the American sky

The world | 06.03.2013 at 3: 33 • updated 07.03.2013 at 11: 32 pm

By CORINE Lesne

There are drones and drones. Hand, the war machines operated by the CIA and the army American, symbols of the fight against terrorism and responsible for the death of several thousand people, in Pakistan or Yemen. They became so common that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, has created a "Medal of value" for their drivers, which, according to the Pentagon, also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, although they just do the war in Florida or Arizona offices.

And there are civilian UAVs, increasingly widespread, as that on which it falls to the end bottom of a snow-covered road Colorado. The gear is stored in premises of "Spaceport" of Aurora, airport space where to leave the commercial shuttles as soon as they are ready and that the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), the Agency which regulates aviation, has given its approval. It is smooth and flat like a shark and transmits images to the computer that is behind you while you attach innocently grey belly.

The squale belongs to an engineer equipped with a strong Scottish accent, Peter Gray (which is having worked for Thomson-CSF Paris and have a house in the Dordogne; the world is small). It has a range of 75 km and may be used to monitor pipelines or help in digital mapping, provides his "papa". But for now, the engineer made primarily of training. Civilian drones have nice having air toys, still need learn the lead.

MONITOR EVERYTHING THAT MOVES

More than a thousand companies - the start-up of Peter Gray, Strategic Simulation Solutions to major weapons contractors - launched "unmanned air vehicle" industry (UAVS), in preparation for the explosion of the market. According to the FAA, more than 10,000 civilian drones will be in circulation before 2020 (in title of comparison, the Pentagon, which had a fleet of 50 UAV ten years ago, has now 7 500). The technique is available, it is tempting to monitor everything that moves: wildlife, traffic congestion, illegal immigrants crossing the border. A to ask how could Live so long without make flying robots.

Everyone wants his drones: electricity companies, to monitor the lines. the farmers, to learn what crops watered ; the farmers, to count their cows, real estate developers, to gauge properties, the National Football League, for filming the melee even closer... Until schools of journalism, whose two (in Missouri and Nebraska) began to teach the use of drones for the purposes of information.

For now, the American sky is not open to private drones. Only 345 public institutions (universities, local fonts) have received title experimental permission to send their gear Watch America. The Mesa County Sheriff, for example, a largely desert area of Western Colorado, no longer moves without his Falcon, a craft with a wingspan of 2.5 meters, equipped with two cameras whose one infrared, in less than 4.5 kg.

But under pressure from the Pentagon and aviation subcontractors (who see with desolation military budgets shrink), Congress directed the FAA to Open airspace to vehicles unmanned by October 2015. On 14 February, she launched the selection procedure of the six pilot areas where flights will be soon allowed. Candidates are presented in 30 States.

A BIG BROTHER FROM THE AIR

For defenders of the industry, as Peter Gray, it would damage the United States themselves not at the forefront of an industry that will bring tens of billions of dollars while allowing to fight against fires of forest or find hikers strayed. This is not the opinion of the respect for Privacy advocates, waving the specter of a Big Brother from the air. Thanks to the technologies tested in the armee, drones can listen in on telephone conversations, recognize faces, read license plates...

Twenty States are already preparing laws restricting the use of UAVS. The principle: not police overflights without "probable cause" offence. And no tear gas or other possible weapons over the heads of the Americans. The Republican representative from Texas Ted Poe, who has proposed a bill banning overflights without a judicial warrant, has stirred the Orwellian scarecrow. "We like it or not, the drones will arrive. We won't know what they observe, what is their purpose, and who sends."

The debate is launched. Who has the right to fly over what? Before aviation, space law was governed by the Roman principle ' deceased is solum ejus is usque ad coelum " ("who owns the ground has the heavens"), said a report by the research arm of Congress (CRS). The argument has prevailed until 1946, when the supreme court has solemnly established had more relevance in a 'modern world' criss-crossed planes.

Will it be same for drones? It may already be too late to be opposed to their movement. As said one of the specialists of the sector, Kimon Valavanis, who heads the laboratory on the drones from the University of Denver, "once you have a cell phone, it is over your privacy".

For the original French page, go to Le Monde. It was translated by Microsoft translator.

lesnes@lemonde.fr

CORINE Lesne
journalist at le Monde.fr

CBS4 News Coverage

Senior Design Project for Undergraduate Engineering Students

Senior engineering majors Patrick Parkinson, James Hills and Kathryn Van Lieshout are working on a potentially life-changing design for amputees.

(Photo courtesy of Wayne Armstrong)

Senior engineering majors Patrick Parkinson, James Hills and Kathryn Van Lieshout are working on a potentially life-changing design for amputees. Their concept is to create a post that could be implanted in the bone and attach to a prosthesis—a design that would allow amputees to get rid of the popularly used stump-socket design. The project is part of Professor Peter Laz's 30-week senior design course in the School of Engineering and Computer Science in conjunction with the University's Center for Orthopaedic Biomechanics.

The students are working in collaboration with Dr. Ronald Hugate, of Presbyterian/St. Luke's Hospital, and amputee Woody Roseland to create their design.
Roseland, 22, is a seven-time cancer survivor who had his left leg amputated 18 months ago. He says he's happy to donate his time for research because having a permanent prosthesis would raise the quality of life for most amputees. The students currently are in the preliminary design stage, collecting data by utilizing the Human Dynamics Lab housed inside the Ritchie Center for Sports & Wellness. In the lab, Parkinson, Hills and Van Lieshout place reflective markers along Roseland's body. His movements are captured by infrared cameras to create 3-D images."It gives us the capability to analyze a person's movements," Van Lieshout says. "We want to see how much pressure, bend and weight a person experiences while doing typical movements."

The data collected will help the seniors understand what their implant design needs to look like to be most beneficial to amputees. By May, they plan to have a 3-D prototype to present to Hugate, along with their recommendations on creating a fully functioning implant. "Undergrads doing transformative research is phenomenal," says Bradley Davidson, director of the Human Dynamics Lab. "It's rewarding to see undergraduate students executing such high-level research."
Kathy Walsh of CBS4 came to the University of Denver to see the students at work.

You can watch her video here.

By: Theresa Mueller