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Srinath Ekkad, the Rolls-Royce Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been selected as the new head of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. He will take over the new position Sept. 18. Ekkad came to Virginia Tech in 2007 as an associate professor. In his decade in Blacksburg he has been the Director of the Commonwealth Center for Aerospace Propulsion Systems, an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, the Director for the Rolls-Royce UTC for Advanced Systems Diagnostics, the Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor of Aerospace Propulsion Systems, and the Associate Vice President for Research. He was appointed a full professor in 2011. Click here to learn more about his new...

Virginia Tech and Lowe’s have joined forces to empower Lowe’s employees. The pair have collaborated to develop an exosuit — a wearable suit with lift-assist technology — currently in pilot at Lowe’s Christiansburg, Virginia, store. The lightweight exosuit is designed to help employees lift and move product through the store more efficiently. Lowe’s Innovation Labs, the disruptive technology hub for Lowe’s, worked with robotics expert Alan Asbeck, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering who specializes in building wearable technology, to collaboratively design a prototype of an exosuit employees could wear to help make lifting products easier. “Over the past couple of years, human assistive devices have become an area of interest,” Asbeck said. “Our technology...

James Strawbridge, Horacio Valeiras, John Montague, David Christian, Al Lingerfelt, and interim dean G. Don Taylor. Virginia Tech's College of Engineering recently inducted five new members at its 18th annual Academy of Engineering Excellence. The academy consists of 146 alumni who have achieved exceptional career success. The college has more than 66,000 living engineering alumni. “All of our new members have led exceptional careers, and this award is one way to recognize them for their incredible achievements,” said Don Taylor, interim dean of the College of Engineering and the Charles O. Gordon Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering. “We are honored to present them with this esteemed distinction and look forward to their continued success.”​ The academy inductees are: David A. Christian, of Fairfax, Virginia;...

The 2017 Mechanical Engineering Senior Design Expo will be held April 28 from 1-3:30 p.m. in the Indoor Practice Facility near Lane Stadium. More than 50 Senior Design teams will present their work with product exhibitions and poster sessions. Vehicles will be displayed outside....

Virginia Tech was selected as one of eight universities to compete in the AutoDrive Challenge, a new collegiate competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineering and General Motors. Each team will be provided a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle as a platform to develop a fully autonomous passenger vehicle. At the end of the project, teams will compete by navigating an urban driving course in autonomous mode. Al Wicks, associate professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering, will lead a diverse team of faculty and students who will work  on the project. “As part of our proposal to be selected for the AutoDrive Challenge, we leveraged our technical diversity by constructing a team featuring the mechanical, and electrical and computer,...