Faculty, Student to Travel to Asia

Three faculty members and a student from the Department will travel to Asia to share information about projects going on at WVU during the Thanksgiving break from classes.

Ever Barbero, chair, and Xingbo Liu, assistant professor, will travel to Osaka, Japan, to attend GALVTECH 07, the premier industrial meeting of the multi-billion dollar international galvanizing industry.

"Few universities attend this event," said Dr. Barbero, "because only a select group of faculty, including several in our department, are equipped to do research and development in this sector.

"This trip is especially important for us because we recently concluded the second of two Department of Energy-sponsored projects that resulted in materials and systems we developed being adopted by steel companies in the U.S. These projects achieved significant energy and cost savings to the steel industry in the U.S. In both projects we had unprecedented industry participation"

While in Japan, Barbero will also deliver a talk about WVU's mechanical and aerospace engineering programs at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology.

In another venture, Professor Victor Mucino and Jeffrey Kubichan, a senior mechanical engineering major and captain of the Challenge X team, will attend the 2007 Capstone-Design Fair at the ChangWon National University in ChangWon, Korea.

The event will be attended by universities from around the world, said Mucino, but WVU was one of only five U.S. universities invited to the event by the Korean government.

In their presentation, Dr. Mucino and Jeffrey will highlight WVU's capstone design projects, in particular the Challenge X project, a four-year competition that challenges student engineers to convert a full-size sport utility vehicle to a hybrid electric vehicle.

11/14/2007