Alumni Forum, Organization of the Week, & Prosthetic Device

Ford, Bacon & Davis (FB&D) recently highlighted a Tau Beta Pi Alumni Engineering Forum hosted by the University of Houston (UH), Texas Epsilon Chapter. The event was co-sponsored by the Tau Beta Pi Texas Gulf Coast Alumni Chapter and took place on the UH campus on December 14, 2015. The four panelists were:

Rick Moore (AR A ’80) – FB&D president
Hector Chavez (NY A ’06) – Intellectual Property & Commercial Litigation Attorney at Smyser Kaplan & Veselka, LLP
Kelly J. Hammar (IA A ’89) – Global Demand Planning Manager at ExxonMobil Chemical Company & TBP District 10 Director
Semant Jain, Ph.D. (MI G ’07) – Managing Partner at Ashwairya Capital Management

Click here to read the news release, hear about the advice panelists gave to the students, and see an image of all that were in attendance.

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The University of Maryland Baltimore County Student Life Center has named the Maryland Delta Chapter of Tau Beta Pi as the Fall 2015 semester’s last student organization of the week. According to the Facebook post, “Tau Beta Pi! It’s the best engineering honor society to join in terms of quantity and quality. The networking is a gold mine because we collaborate extensively with students, grad students, alum, professionals, and teachers.” See the image above and read more about the chapter here.

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Gina E. Bertocci, Ph.D. (PA L ’83), recently led a project to create a prosthetic device for a six-year-old who was born without fingers on his right hand. Traditionally, creating the three devices would have cost thousands, but now the devices were made using a 3-D printer and for under $50 in materials. The prosthetic devices were given to the boy’s family free of charge as part of a graduate class.

Dr. Bertocci says in the article that “prosthetics once were focused on cosmetics so they resembled a human hand. Now, especially for kids, making them look like something from the movie ‘Transformers’ is seen as a way to ensure children want to wear them. One of Lucas’ prosthetics is known as ‘Spider-Man,’ and another is lime green, glows in the dark and has a light on it.”

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