{"id":15149,"date":"2012-08-14T12:16:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-14T16:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=15149"},"modified":"2012-08-24T10:00:08","modified_gmt":"2012-08-24T14:00:08","slug":"air-forces-summer-at-the-edge-fires-up-wright-state-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2012\/08\/14\/air-forces-summer-at-the-edge-fires-up-wright-state-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force\u2019s Summer-at-the-Edge fires up Wright State students"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Wright State biomedical engineering students Brittany Fouts, Monica Leslie and Michelle Bricker explain their SMARTCare project to Wright State student Michelle Harr at the Summer-at-the-Edge Open House.<\/p><\/div>\n

What did you do this summer?<\/p>\n

Wright State engineering sophomore Jeremy Lee helped make a giant spud gun\u2014and miniature spy drones to be fired from it.<\/p>\n

Brittany Fouts, Monica Leslie and Michelle Bricker\u2014all Wright State biomedical engineering students\u2014built virtual-world homes where nursing students can visit patients, check their conditions and give blood infusions.<\/p>\n

They were among more than 100 high school and college students who tackled more than 30 research projects this summer in the Air Force Research Laboratory\u2019s (AFRL\u2019s) Summer-at-the-Edge internship program.<\/p>\n

They showed off their work Monday, August 13, in the Apollo Room of Wright State\u2019s Student Union.<\/p>\n

The AFRL-funded program creates teams of students ranging from high school to graduate school, some from outside Ohio. They spend 10 weeks working on technology-based projects at the Wright Brothers Institute\u2019s Tec^Edge Innovation and Collaboration Center. AFRL also funds a similar program called Year at the Edge.<\/p>\n

AFRL is the Air Force\u2019s center for science and technology. Its headquarters and several research directorates are located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base close to Wright State.<\/p>\n

AFRL\u2019s goal is to help develop the next generation of scientists and engineers, said Rob Williams, Ph.D., director of the Summer-at-the-Edge program. \u201cOur focus is very simple. It\u2019s inventing the future, one student at a time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Wright State student Jeremy Lee and Ohio State student Jeff Blanford explain their team's micro air vehicle at the Summer-at-the-Edge Open House.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lee, a mechanical engineering major from Hudson, worked with high school students from Centerville and Oakwood and college students from six other universities on the Tube Launched Quadrotor and Fixed Wing Micro Air Vehicle project.<\/p>\n

The students designed and built two kinds of miniature drones\u2014one with wings and one with four miniature rotors\u2014designed to be folded up and fired from a launching tube. They even built a big compressed-air cannon to test-fire them\u2014the kind of plastic-pipe contraption you might expect to see college kids using to fire potatoes.<\/p>\n

Lee said the project was an eye-opener. No single team member had all the needed skills in engineering, mathematics and physics. They had to learn how to work together. \u201cMy mindset when I came to college was, an engineer can do everything. Which isn\u2019t true at all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fouts, Leslie and Bricker also said Summer-at-the-Edge was a good way to learn how to work in teams on challenging projects\u2014something students can\u2019t get in a classroom. \u201cI now know how to interact with people on projects,\u201d said Fouts, a junior who was team leader of their SMARTCare virtual-reality project, which included four college and one high school student.<\/p>\n

For Bricker, a 2012 Beavercreek High School graduate who\u2019s just starting at Wright State, it was a headlong dive into her intended major.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose computer science, but I wasn\u2019t rock-solid about it. Because of my experience here, I really want to do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Wright State offers Wright^Edge Academic Pipeline Scholarships for Summer-at-the-Edge and Year-at-the-Edge. Students in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine degree programs may be eligible to apply. Visit www.wright.edu\/edge<\/a> to learn more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 100 high school and college students tackled more than 30 research projects this summer in the Air Force Research Laboratory\u2019s (AFRL\u2019s) Summer-at-the-Edge internship program. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":15151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,743,725,727,715,717,18,719],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-engineering-computer-science","category-home-news-sidebar","category-homepage-photos-and-video","category-news","category-photos","category-research","category-special-categories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15149"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15425,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15149\/revisions\/15425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}