Gift From Parker Hannifin Enables Samueli School to Open New "Hands On" Lab for Student Education
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UC Irvine will create a new Motion & Control Lab, thanks to a gift from Parker Hannifin. The $100,000 gift was presented by Bob Barker, Parker aerospace group president, on November 10, 2003.
"This gift will allow us to create a 'hands-on' laboratory experience for students," said James Bobrow, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering who will take the lead in creating the new lab. "Our students will get to see the fundamentals of engineering in action with new, exciting experiments in automatic control and robotics. Our goal is to create a laboratory environment where students are able to explore their own ideas and projects rather than just observing an experiment. We want students to be able to apply their fundamentals to real-world problems."
Scheduled for completion next year, the lab will allow engineering students to investigate the three primary methods of motion and control: electro-hydraulics, electro-pneumatics and electro- mechanical motion control. The lab also will foster an inter-disciplinary approach to teaching motion and control by combining electronic power systems, control and fluid power concepts traditionally taught separately. Students will learn that there are several approaches to creating motion in a machine, says Bobrow, which will enable them to make optimal decisions about the method that is best for a particular application.
Through the generosity of the Parker Foundation, UCI is the 10th U.S. university to house a Parker Motion & Control Lab. Other universities include: Purdue University, Cleveland State University, University of Akron, Murray State University, University of Cincinnati, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Western Michigan University, Cal-Poly, San Luis Obispo and University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.
The company started this program in 1994 to better prepare students to enter the real world as motion and control problem solvers.
With annual sales exceeding $6 billion, Parker Hannifin is the world's leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies and systems, providing precision-engineered solutions for a wide variety of commercial, mobile, industrial and aerospace markets. The company employs more than 46,000 people in 44 countries around the world. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.parker.com , or its investor information site at www.phstock.com.
