IEEE oversees the South Brunswick High School VEX Robotics Competition

On Saturday, February 1st, 2020 the Rutgers Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Student Branch (RIEEE) conducted the South Brunswick High School VEX Robotics Competition (VRC). The event was attended by 36 teams of high school students from all over New Jersey and over 500 students and parents came. Of the 36 teams competing, only 3 get to move on to the State Championships, by earning the Excellence Award, or being the Tournament Champions (2 teams).

This year’s competition was Tower Takeover, where 4 teams in 2 alliances are pitted against each other to stack as many cubes as they can in their alliance goal zones. They can also multiply their points by putting cubes in elevated towers. Teams must first compete in an autonomous portion of the match where they can get an early lead by having the robot navigate the course by itself. Immediately afterward driver control starts. The match takes a total of 2 minutes.

The Rutgers IEEE Student Branch ran inspections, refereed the matches, and judged all 36 teams during the course of the day. 9 awards were given out to deserving teams, including the Excellence, Design, Judges, Build, and Amaze awards.

Congratulations to Tournament Champions Union Senior High School (Team 161A), South Brunswick High School (Team 750S) and Excellence Award Winner Union Senior High School (Team 161A). Teams 750S (SBHS), 750X (SBHS) and 161A (Union) will be moving on to the State Tournament.

The event received a lot of positive responses from the Event Partners at SBHS, students and other coaches and parents attending. Students are mentioning that compared to other competitions, the referees took their time explaining the rules when infringed upon and allowed a feedback, and cross debate.  In addition, due to the dedication of the volunteers and months of planning, the teams had an amazing time competing with the robots they spent so much time working on.  Rutgers IEEE will be running the Monroe High School VRC Competition this coming weekend.

 

New Portable Tool Analyzes Microbes in the Environment

This portable tool can rapidly reveal whether a cell is stressed, robust or unaffected by environmental conditions. Image: Jianye Sui

Imagine a device that could swiftly analyze microbes in oceans and other aquatic environments, revealing the health of these organisms – too tiny to be seen by the naked eye – and their response to threats to their ecosystems.

Rutgers researchers have created just such a tool, a portable device that could be used to assess microbes, screen for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and analyze algae that live in coral reefs. Their work is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The tool, developed initially to assess algae, can determine in the field or in laboratories how microbes and cells respond to environmental stresses, such as pollution and changes in temperature or water salinity.

“This is very important for environmental biology, given the effects of climate change and other stressors on the health of microorganisms, such as algae that form harmful blooms, in the ecosystem,” said senior author Mehdi Javanmard, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the School of Engineering at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. 
 
“Our goal was to develop a novel way of assessing cell health that did not rely on using expensive and complex genomic tools,” said co-senior author Debashish Bhattacharya, a distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. “Being able to assess and understand the status of cells, without having to send samples back to the lab, can allow the identification of threatened ecosystems based on a ‘stress index’ for their inhabitants.”

The research focused on a well-studied green microalga, Picochlorum. The tool can quickly reveal whether a cell is stressed, robust or unaffected by environmental conditions. Microbes pass one by one through a micro-channel, thinner than the diameter of a human hair. Impedance, or the amount an electrical field in the tool is perturbed when a cell passes through the channel, is measured. Impedance varies among cells in a population, reflecting their size and physiological state, both of which provide important readouts of health.

The researchers showed that electrical impedance measurements can be applied at the single-cell and population levels. The scientists plan to use the tool to screen for antibiotic resistance in different bacteria and algae that live in symbiosis with coral reefs, which will help give them a better idea of coral health.

The lead author is Jianye Sui, an electrical and computer engineering doctoral student at Rutgers. Fatima Foflonker, a graduate of the microbial biology doctoral program, co-authored the study.

Story by Todd Bates for Rutgers Today

Media Contact
Todd Bates
todd.bates@rutgers.edu
848-932-0550
 
 

Rutgers IEEE VexU Robotics qualifies for the 2020 Vex Robotics World Championship

After winning Tournament Champions and the Design Award at the Widener University Competition, the Rutgers IEEE VexU Robotics team aimed higher after missing out on a World tournament spot. They traveled to Baltimore, Maryland to compete in the VexU Cardinal Classic competition. This time, they only brought one team, SKAR (Scarlet Knights at Rutgers), to compete. Of the over a dozen people who worked on the bots throughout the year, the team members who traveled to Maryland were:

  • Agam Modasiya
  • Akash Pathuri
  • Rakesh Warrier
  • Josh Chung
  • Karun Kanda
  • Damian Modzelewski

Competing against teams from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the Scarlet Knights were able to get second in Skills and fourth in Qualifications. After moving on to the elimination tournament, they lost to the eventual tournament champions due to a disqualification. 

After sticking around to cheer on their fellow New Jersey team, NJIT, the team was awarded the excellence award which qualifies them for the 2020 Vex Robotics World Championship competition in late April where they will compete against teams from China, Mexico, New Zealand, and other teams from around the globe.

 

Career & Internship Mega Fair Spring 2020

Join us at one of the largest and most diverse recruiting opportunities in the nation. An anticipated group of nearly 300 employers (different employers each day) will be available to network with candidates to discuss full-time, part-time, and internship opportunities from a wide variety of fields. This event is only open to Rutgers University (New Brunswick, Camden, Newark, and RBHS) students and alumni from all academic disciplines.

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