The University of Utah College of Engineering was proud to host the 125th American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition at the Salt Palace Convention Center June 24 – 27. The conference was dedicated to all disciplines of engineering education features more than 400 technical sessions.

As the host campus, the U’s College of Engineering welcomed some 4,000 attendees from engineering institutions all over the country. The week was full of invaluable and exciting sessions and demonstrations, including keynotes, exhibits, socials, tours, a pavilion of student projects, and more.

“The College of Engineering is pleased to be the host campus for the 125th Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education,” said Dean Richard B. Brown. “It gives us a chance to show off student research, our beautiful campus, and the entrepreneurism for which the University of Utah is so well known.”

The College of Engineering also showed off its booth in the exhibit hall (see photo gallery below) which included interactive demonstrations with virtual reality games and applications as well as a prosthetic arm that operates with a neural interface. The demos represented the work of the College’s Entertainment Arts and Engineering video game development program and the research of U bioengineering associate professor Gregory Clark. Attendees who visited the booth also had the opportunity to win a free portable weather sensor designed and built by U electrical and computer engineering students under assistant professor Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon.

After the conference, the College of Engineering also hosted an Engineering Commercialization Workshop with information about how to commercialize research discoveries. In addition to a keynote presentation by Ross DeVol, former chief research officer for the Milken Institute, the workshop covered a variety of other topics, including: building an entrepreneurial ecosystem, policies that support commercialization, the relationship between research and entrepreneurship, an engineering entrepreneurship curriculum, managing conflicts of interest, dangers and pitfalls of commercialization, and examples of successful commercialization ventures. The day also included a tour of the Lassonde Studios, a live-in space and hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation.