Students

Many mechanical engineering students enter college with little or no prior experience working on engines. Stephen Belkoff aims to fix that—with help from a pair of antique Ford N-series tractors.

Semester.ly ranks among the most impressive student-driven successes at Johns Hopkins in recent decades. The innovative course scheduling platform has taken root at Johns Hopkins and at other universities in North America.

The annual Tower of Power contest challenges teams of undergraduates, graduate students, staff members, alumni, and area middle school students to engineer the tallest possible towers from uncooked pasta and marshmallows.

“Building a satellite is very specific work, and there’s no instruction booklet,” says APL’s J. Felipe Ruiz. “EP has given me all the tools I need to build my solution from scratch.”

Last summer, Rayyan Gorashi ’19 had a bucket list-worthy few months, hiking the French Alps, cheering on the Belgium national team in the FIFA World Cup, and problem-solving unanticipated setbacks as a research intern at imec.

Ryan Cotterell, who was named Johns Hopkins’ first Facebook Fellow last spring, is using the fellowship to explore questions about developing more equitable artificial intelligence.

“A soldier’s job is hard enough,” Beatriz Medeiros, a third-year materials science and engineering student, says. “By improving their armor, we’re hoping to make their jobs a little bit easier.”

Fleets of small fossil-fuel power plants typically smooth fluctuations in electric power. But could wind farms themselves provide that service?