Innovation: Past, Present, & Future

A month after his 97th birthday, the Los Angeles Times featured Dr. Simon Ramo, Utah Alpha 1933, as the “epitome of a Renaissance man.”

Dr. Ramo is known as the co-founder of TRW Corp. and Bunker-Ramo (now part of Honeywell). He worked for Howard Hughes, led electronics research at General Electric, and is recognized as “the father of the intercontinental ballistic missile.”

Today, he is “producing papers and op-eds on technological issues.” Read the article for more on Dr. Ramos and his friend and business partner, the late Dr. Dean E. Wooldridge, California Beta 1932.

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New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) student, Mike Lowry, recently won first place in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers annual Student Design Competition.

He developed a “single-stream recycling machine” and will now compete in the national design competition next November in Vancouver. Lowry credited the support of fellow NJIT engineering students who were part of another team entry, which included Phong Pham, NJ G 2010.

NJIT lecturer Harry Kountouras, NY H ’71, says that “this is an annual competition in which NJIT has taken first place for eight of the last 13 years. And, it’s no cakewalk.”
Read the article here

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The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that Auburn University is planning “to open an engineering campus in China.”

According to the article, the campus will be built in Danyang, a city northwest of Shanghai. Dean of Auburn’s engineering school, Dr. Larry D. Benfield, AL A ’66, has been interested in an international engineering campus for some time.

“We have discussed this with a number of our donors, who feel, as we do, that it’s extremely beneficial for our students to have this international exposure,” said Dr. Benefield.

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