Sustainability Activities in the
College of Engineering

Courses

• CE 527 Sustainable Mobility (Jud)
Based on student and administrative input, the lab will be to "design a mobility system that reduces the campus community's automobile dependency and improves its environment, economy, and social equity over the master plan build out." Students may treat the following subjects:

All groups: "Parking reduction objectives and ways to achieve them, mostly through Transportation Demand Management (TDM)." Individual groups:

1. Bicycle: "Instant easy bicycle network" on and around campus, including a mobile and LEEDS certified Bicycle Center.
2. Pedestrian zone "Library/Engineering"; mostly short term, probably including a Bicycle Center.
3. Traffic calming along Grand Avenue, East Perimeter and parts of North Perimeter.
4. Pedestrian Zone "Perimeter South 2020."

• MATE 222 Materials Selection for the Life Cycle (Chen)
Student teams will be presenting their projects of designing a "better" product, with a large concern about the environmental impact.

• MATE 306 Materials Thermodynamics (Vanasupa)
The class presents solutions to campus mobility and transportation. In particular, groups will be presenting an analysis of the Bus Rapid Transit system for Cal Poly and its emissions benefits.

• MATE 210 Materials Engineering and Lab (Savage)
The course provides sustainability concepts, including participation in Hewlett Packard’s Planet Partners Program and recycles inkjet cartridges. This gives the class an opportunity to discuss Life Cycle Analysis concepts for polymer materials. In addition, the students form teams and investigate the impact of material properties on the performance of commercial products. Some examples include: Biodiesel Industries Inc.; Global Sun Ovens®; Hydrogen Fuel Cells – GM's AUTOnomy Concept Car; BP’s Portable Solar Panels; Bergey Windpower Co.; Sunderwater Technology’s Solar, Automatic Underwater Vehicle; Vestas Wind Turbines; and hydrogen fuel cells utilizing bipolar plate technology. This gives the students the chance to explore the roles of marketing, system design, manufacturing, and environmental engineering on products that impact sustainability.

Projects

• Recyclability of Automobiles (Alex Tsuji)
In response to the National Student Design Competition for Sustainability, sponsored by the EPA, Tsuji developed a rating system to quantify the environmental impacts of light-duty motor vehicles at the end of their life-cycle based on recyclability, toxic material content, and ultimate disposal.

• Zero Waste Cal Poly (Andrea Ramirez)
A waste minimization project for the Cal Poly Open House. The five-year goal is to create a zero-waste event. Ramirez has coordinated with the local Integrated Waste Management Board, ASI, Campus Dining, Facilities, and the Experimental Farm. A graphics arts class designed a logo.

• Biodiesel Fuel Project (Yarrow Nelson)
Nelson is working with Ian Woertz (president of the Cal Poly Biodiesel Club) on a project to make biodiesel from algae at dairy waste lagoons.

• Engineers Without Borders
The EWB recently completed its first international project: installation of a drinking water treatment system for the village of Mae Nam Khun in Thailand. The group was founded in 2004 to undertake projects that bring sustainable, long-term benefits to impoverished communities.

• Sustainable Power for Electrical Resources (SuPER)
Electrical Engineering faculty members, Jim Harris, Ahmad Nafisi, Ali Shaban, and Taufik, are working on a project to develop a low-cost, sustainable source of electrical power with a 20-year life cycle that can be owned by a family unit.

• Efficient Development of Advanced Public Transportation Systems (Jeff Gerfen)
Phase II Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Applications of Advanced Technologies in Transportation Engineering.

• Civil & Environmental Engineering Air Pollutions Training Grant 2002-2007 (Hal Cota)
Cota is a director of the Cal Poly EPA area-wide training center and a chairman of California Air Resources Board. Research interests in air pollution, noise reduction, meteorological, air emission.

• Safety of Trees in Narrow Medians of Urban Highways
(Ed Sullivan)
Phase II of the project involved collection and analysis of data on collision experience, traffic, and physical characteristics throughout California for 65 conventional urban highway sections with medians. Phase III involved the planting of large trees in curbed medians along conventional urban and suburban state highways.

• ITR — Synchroscalar: Exploiting Synchronized Clock Domains for Energy Efficient Multirate Embedded Computation (Diana Franklin)
As communication protocols evolve, their computational needs exceed both the performance and energy budgets of conventional embedded architectures. This project proposes the Synchroscalar architecture, a highly parallel design with multiple clock domains. High parallelism is the only way to approach the energy efficiency of Application Specific Integrated Circuits while maintaining the flexibility to support rapidly evolving protocols.

• On-Road Measurement of Light-Duty Gasoline and Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicle Emission Trends (Andrew Kean)
The principal investigator is interested in combustion and pollution emissions, energy, and sustainability.

Center for Sustainability in Engineering
(CSinE – www.csine.calpoly.edu)

Established to provide engineers with the interdisciplinary perspective needed to inspire, develop, and implement practicable methods for sustainability. The organization helps faculty integrate sustainability practices into the curriculum, coordinates and funds multidisciplinary projects with sustainable components, and increases community awareness of the need for sustainable solutions.