Activities

Service to Community
Apart from activities for promotion of Materials science and materials awareness, MA chapter at FIU is very active in community service. Supporting challenged children, presenting nanotechnology seminars at high schools, introducing freshman to material research laboratories, supporting hurricane victims and other food-drives to support the needy are just few events, which Material Advantage at FIU serves community at. Material Advantage members are involved with other organizations too and indulge and assist in their community service activities.

MA members help Undergraduate Students for their Materials Science and Engineering Class: Every Wednesday and Thursday from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at Mechanical Engineering Department Hallway

The Chapter provides undergraduate tutoring in Basic Materials Engineering. Weekly service helps students gain a better understanding and direct grasping of courses directly through students. Planning to arrange for more subjects in future. 

1. Technical Demonstration to kids at Miami Science Museum May 3rd 2008: Material advantage at FIU attended the Nanoweekend Event at Miami Science Museum in order to make kids aware of recent development in technical field. Mr. Srinivas Rao Bakshi, Mr. Anup Kumar Keshri and Mr. Jorge.

MA members attended the Nanoweekend at Miami Science Museum 3rd May 2008

Tercerro attended this event and demonstrated the Superconductivity experiment and showed Shape memory alloys. Professor Agarwal from FIU also attended this event. These tours help kids in motivating them to choose careers in engineering.

2. Students Organizations Council Annual Banquet, Apr. 2nd 2008: The year end banquet of Students Organization Council was attended by chapter members. Out of the 120 odd clubs at FIU, Material Advantage student chapter was honoured by announcement that “The most active club”” for its exceptional performance and contribution to FIU during the year.

3.  Participation as judge in Science Bowl organized by SHPE
Another recent activity by the chapter was the participation of chapter members as judges for the national science bowl held in FIU, on Feb. 23rd 2008. It gave us an occasion to interact with students from over 30 middle and high schools and to promote science and engineering among them.

Social Activities
MA members took part in many social activities in order to popularize and increase the visibility of the Chapter. Social activities are a part of promoting Materials Science and Engineering to undergraduates and undecided-major students. Also these social activities help providing a podium of networking among student-faculty, student-student, and student-organizations. Aim is always to synergize social activities with structurally supporting events, and make the chapter gain another milestone.

1. Promoting MA at Students Organizations Council Club Fair, Jan 22-23rd 2008: SOC Club Fair is an event where all the clubs, more than 130 in total, set up booths in order to attract students to join them. Materials Advantage chapter set up a booth at the SOC Club Fair to educate people about the chapter. The numerous awards received by the chapter were kept for display in order to prove how much active our chapter is. The chapter newsletter Crystal was circulated and interested students were briefed about the membership benefits.

2. K-12 Outreach Activities
a) Nano-Club activities
MA chapter at FIU is very active in its outreach activities and it has been successful in reaching the high school students through organized seminars and laboratory tours. The recent step in this direction is the inception of Nano-Club. The Nano-Club will link the various science groups of different high schools in and around Miami to MA chapter at FIU. MA chapter will arrange and deliver talks at the high schools. Each high school will have a teacher appointed as Nano-Ambassador and who will serve as the link between MA and the school. Once in a year MA will organize an Inter-School Essay and Quiz competition based on Materials Science. Already Coral Park High School of Miami has agreed to join the Nano-Club. The first Nano-Club talk to Coral Park high school student was delivered by chapter faculty advisor Dr. A. Agarwal on July 19th 2006. The students were asked to earn the membership of Nano-Club by answering to some simple questions which they did through email. Recently Mr. Srinivasa Rao Bakshi and Mr. Jorge Tercerro delivered their talk on nano-technology and they demonstrated Hydrogen Racer Car to kids.

Nano-Club presentation at Coral Park High School Jan 22nd 2008

• Several educational and informative kits demonstrating science experiments have been purchased. The list includes:
• Hydrogen fuel cell driven car
• Shape memory alloy demonstration
• Amorphous alloy properties demonstration (the atomic trampoline)
• Superconductivity demonstration kit

b) Engineering Gala, Feb. 22nd 2008
Engineering Gala is the time when the students from high school get to see and know what is in store for them if they chose engineering as a career. It is a very important activity at FIU to inspire young people to take up engineering as their career. Over 1200 students and teachers from K-12 schools in and around Miami visited the Engineering campus of FIU.  MA chapter has always viewed it as a platform to promote the subject of Materials Science.

MA chapter organized a tour of the Plasma Forming Laboratory at FIU and demonstrated the Plasma spraying process for the students. The students were amazed and delighted to see the plasma plume and were very much interested in the process. They asked a lot of questions ranging from application of the process to the science behind it. It was a great experience for the members too to explain the process to school kids in a simple, interesting and effective manner. Engineering Gala demonstrations were so successful that many high schools were delighted to retake a tour to plasma forming laboratory.

4. Joint meeting with ASME, ASHRAE and IMAPS

ASME- American Society of Mechanical Engineers
ASHRAE-American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers
IMAPS-International Microelectronics and Packaging Society
MA members had joint meetings with other student chapters in mechanical engineering like ASME and ASHRAE in order to promote the chapter and to interact with students. In addition to that MA members also attended graduate student organization (GSO) meeting. This helped in mutual development and growth of the chapters.

Research Nuggets 

Spring 2007:

This week (Apr. 5th-Apr. 18th 2007): Facts About Aluminum

Mar. 22nd-Apr. 4th: Materials that make objects INVISIBLE  !!!

Mar. 8-Mar. 21st: Fingerprinting Individual Atoms by Atomic Force Microscopy

Feb. 15- Feb. 28th: NEW SHAPE-MEMORY POLYMERS CAN TAKE ON THREE SUCCESIVE SHAPES: Breakthrough in Nanotechnology

Feb. 1st-Feb 14th: STARDUST: CATCHING COMET DUST

Jan. 18-Jan. 31 '07:  Light squeezes through nano coax 

Fall 2006:

Last Research Nugget of Fall 2006: Femtosecond Laser Creates "Black Metal"

Nov. 9th-Nov. 22 '06: Shape memory Alloys

Oct. 26-Nov. 8 '06: Can People go to Mars? 

Oct. 12-Oct. 25 '06: Snowflakes: The Beauty and Creativity of Nature

 Sept. 28- Oct. 11 '06: Nanowire Arrays Detect Signals Along Individual Neurons

 Sept. 14-28 '06    Nacre: Mimicking Nature 

Proposal Grant from American Society of Metals

Involving K-12 students and Undergraduates in Materials Science and Engineering. Special quiz and workshops will be organized for the students.

     Details of the Proposal and Plan

Meetings (Monthly)

To discuss and activate the charged wires for participation and planning of special events and assigning responsibilities in undertaking and proposing benefiting projects. 

Seminar Scheduling (Monthly)

Arranging seminar presentations by elite faculties, professionals and industrialists both from FIU and outside FIU.