Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: Smog kills
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (122) · December 4th, 2007 · Add a Comment
Today in History – December 4, 1952 – Killer fog begins in London England and the word “smog” is coined. A dense fog mixed with sooty black coal smoke killed over 10,000 Londoners in four days, remaining one of the deadliest environmental tragedies in recent history. As many of the initital deaths were elderly or ill people, the medical staff who treated patients at the time did not realize the cause and extent of the impact. It was the shortage of coffins and high sales of flowers were the first indications that many people were being killed. The effect of carbon emissions on the the environment remains today and is the major contributor to global warming.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on global warming and smog and air pollution. For related curricula, visit the Chemical Engineering Education or Environmental Engineering Education disciplinary communities.
Also on this date in 1996, NASA’s Mars Pathfinder and Sojourner rover launched from Cape Canaveral.
Tags: Aerospace Engineering · Environmental Engineering · General Engineering, Engineering Science
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