Written by: webmaster November 15, 2011 We here at the UAH College of Engineering are proud to announce that in April 2011, Dr. Christina L. Carmen, Lecturer in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department (MAE), was selected as a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award recipient. In Oct. 2011, she will travel to Toulouse, France, as a guest of the 2011 SAE AeroTech Congress and Exhibition, to receive her award and meet with aerospace industry representatives to further provide UAH engineering students innovative and relevant research and design opportunities. Dr. Carmen obtained a Bachelor of Aerospace Engineering degree as well as a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. While at Ga. Tech she worked with Dr. Warren Strahle, Ph.D., determining the fractal dimension of the Ammonium Perchlorate solid rocket propellant. Additionally, she obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) with a focus upon turbulent combustion modeling. Dr. Carmen has been a Lecturer in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) department at UAH since 2006. She primarily teaches MAE senior capstone design classes with a focus upon product realization – a class she has taught for 9 years. Several of Dr. Carmen’s senior design teams have won national and international design competitions including the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Safety Engineering and Risk Analysis Division (SERAD) safety competition, the International Aluminum Extrusion Design Competition, the American Astronautical Society/von Braun Symposium student poster competition and the NASA Great Moonbuggy Race. In 2010, the UAH Moonbuggy team won 1stplace in the Best Design category and the System Safety Challenge. In the 2011, the UAH Moonbuggy team again garnered 1st place in the System Safety Challenge and 2nd place in the overall international competition with over 80 competitors. Dr. Carmen emphasizes student submittal of research papers, documenting their design efforts, to various conferences. In 2010, five of her design students presented papers at the prestigious International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Prague, Czech Republic. In 2011, another senior design student will present a paper at the IAC to be held in Capetown, South Africa. Dr. Carmen is the UAH ASME student chapter faculty advisor as well as the Vice-Chair of the North Alabama ASME section. She recently served as a Department of Defense SMART scholarship panelist in Washington, D.C., in the Mechanical Engineering Division and as a delegate to the ASME Leadership Training conference in Dallas, TX. In 2010, Dr. Carmen was named the Outstanding Mechanical Engineer in North Alabama by ASME. Last year she was also awarded a NASA Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) faculty fellowship – one of 5 senior design class instructors selected from around the country to participate in the program. As a result of the fellowship, several UAH MAE senior design teams have been able to work with NASA engineers on projects that are relevant to NASA’s mission. SAE International is a global association of more than 128,000 engineers and related technical experts in the aerospace, automotive and commercial-vehicle industries. SAE International’s core competencies are life-long learning and voluntary consensus standards development. SAE International’s charitable arm is the SAE Foundation, which supports many programs, including A World In Motion® and the Collegiate Design Series. The SAE Teetor Program stimulates contacts between younger engineering educators and practicing engineers in industry and government. September 10, 2011
