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Last weekend I attended the 2019 ASEE Zone 1 Conference at Niagara Fall, NY (from April 11-13). There, we have the chance to present our work implementing Gamification in Engineering Bridge Programs (see PDF)(see PTT).  Thanks to the College of Engineering Center of Outreach and Inclusion for their support and their hard work on the Jump Start Program. Here just a few pictures of the event.

Thanks to the Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering for the Multicultural Engineering Program Outstanding Graduate Student Award, Spring 2019.

 Thanks for all the support, guidance, and hard work from Erin Hostetler, Helen Edson, Dorcas Kaweesa, Dwayne Ray Cormier, Ph.D., Associate Dean Tonya Peeples, and Dean Justin Schwartz.

Last week I was at Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (Frist of America) giving several talks about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (news articles HERE and HERE), motivating the students to learn more about these topics and showing them the potential of these algorithms. Thanks to the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (Primary of America), its Science Faculty, and its School of Computer Science for the invitation and all the hard work to organize these events.

A lot of very engaged students, not only from computer science, were present in my Sunday morning and Monday evening talks. From some of the pictures of the Monday talk, you can see that there were so many students that they could not fit in the room, so they set up a few TVs and speakers outside. This shows real motivation from the students to learn about these topics especially since a lot of them were standing up the whole time. Also, there were a lot of great questions from students from a wide range of fields, not only from engineering and Computer science (informatics).

I hope the students take the initiative and take advantage of all the free resources to learn about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

More pictures of the event here:

The International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is one of the largest interdisciplinary mechanical engineering conferences in the world. This year, it took place in Pittsburgh, PA (November 9-15, 2018). This was my first time attending IMECE, and I met a lot of great engineers and researchers from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. There I participated in the National Science Foundation Research Poster Competition. I had the chance to learn about several exciting research, ranging from impact welding to self-cleaning polymers for solar panels.  There I had the chance to present our work on generative design models and designers’ bias, which was recently accepted in the Journal of Mechanical Design (see link).

Here are a few pictures of the event:

The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) 2018 National Convention celebrated in Cleveland, OH (November 7th-11th, 2018) was an extraordinary experience. Once again, I was honored to participate in the NSF Leverage Faculty Development Symposium supported by the NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) program. Thanks to SHPE and NSF for making this valuable learning experience a reality. I was able to network and meet with faculties and learn valuable lessons about how to succeed in my future career.

In addition, we had the chance to present our work on how deep learning generative models are used in the product development process and how designers are biased toward computer and human-generated designs at the Engineering Science Symposium (see presentation).  This work is part of our research  “Exploring biases between human and machine generated designs”  in ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. I also served as a judge for the Engineering Science Symposium poster section.

Finally, during the career fair, I helped Penn State Applied Research Laboratory and the College of Engineering in the search and recruitment of minorities and underrepresented students that are planning to pursue a career in the STEM fields. During the fair, I had the privilege to meet, talk with, and advise several great students who are already doing some interesting research work.

Here are a few pictures of the convention:

Thanks to the Materials Research Institute at Penn State University for a great workshop on Diversity in STEM. Special thanks to Dr. Linda Sapochak from the National Science Foundation (NSF), and our own Associate Dean Dr.Tonya Peeples from the College of Engineering #DiversityIsOurStrength #engineering #science

Thanks to the Materials Research Institute @penn_state for a great workshop on #DiversityInSTEM. Special thanks to @NSF Dr. Linda Sapochak, and our own @PSUEngineering @TonyaPeeples #DiversityIsOurStrength pic.twitter.com/KxlJusaHz7

— Christian Lopez (@CLopez_B) October 23, 2018

The Penn State Graduate School and College of Engineering STEM Fall Open House. Students had back to back tours and meetings with faculties and grad students. Here are Dean Justin Schwartz and Associate Dean Tonya Peeples giving some remarks. Thanks to Erin Hostetler and the team from PSU College of Engineering for their hard work hashtag#engineering hashtag#graduateschool hashtag#research

@GradSchoolPSU @PSUEngineering STEM Fall Open House. Students had back to back meetings with faculties and grad students. Here are @SchwartzJustin and @TonyaPeeples giving some remarks. Thanks to @ErinMcHost and @PSUEngDiversity for their hard work #engineering #graduateschool pic.twitter.com/kuCfhHXahg

— Christian Lopez (@CLopez_B) October 19, 2018

Welcome Back BBQ (and raffle) hosted by the @PSUEngineering Multicultural Engineering Program (MEP) and @Phillips66Co. Thanks to @dwayne_cormier, @TonyaPeeples, and the @PSUEngDiversity team for their hard work #Diversity #Engineering pic.twitter.com/cwigEj4RU8

— Christian Lopez (@CLopez_B) October 18, 2018

Once again, I was awarded a Tapia Scholarship to participate in the 2018  Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Student Research Competition (SRC) at the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference (Sept. 19-22, Orlando, FL). In this competition, I presented my work titled “Towards personalized gamification to promote physical activity.” In this work, we presented a machine learning method that utilizes facial keypoint and heart rate data of users to predict their performance in physical gamified tasks.

This years conference was an extraordinary experience. I had the honor to meet the man of the hour, Dr. Richard Tapia. I was able to personally thank him for all his work on promoting and advocating for diversity in the STEM fields and making the ACM Tapia conference a reality, which each year keeps on growing. Here are just a few pictures of the conference and Dr. Richard Tapia. (more pictures to come…)

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2018 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC) & Computers & Information in Engineering (CIE) Conference was a great experience. I had the chance to present my research and discuss with other researchers possible venues for future research. The conference was an excellent opportunity to learn about the state-of-the-art research in the field of Engineering Design and how Machine Learning is impacting the field.

I presented the work done in collaboration with Dr. Scarlet Miller and Dr. Conrad Tucker, titled: “Human Validation of Computer vs. Human Generated Design Sketches,“(see PDF)(see presentation) which was one of the few selected papers invited to the upcoming Journal of Mechanical Design special issue. In this new work, we expanded our research done on the functionality of sketches generated by deep learning generative models and explore the factors that affect humans perception of computer generated sketches as well as the value of using crowdsourcing to evaluate new computer generated sketch ideas.

In addition, we presented the work done by Kevin Lesniak and Dr. Conrad Tucker, titled: “Real-Time Occlusion Between Real and Digital Objects in Augmented Reality” (see presentation). Finally, we presented our work titled: “Integrating Co-Robots and Machine Learning in Engineering Lab Environments to Provide Personalized Feedback”(see PDF)(see Poster).