August marks one year since students from the Brazil Scientific Mobility Program (BSMP) arrived on campus. Run by the Institute of International Education and supported by the Brazilian government, BSMP places top-achieving junior and senior students pursuing STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) at U.S. colleges and universities to gain global experience, improve their language skills, and increase international dialogue in science and technology.

The Fordham cohort—Aryadne Guardieiro Pereira Rezende, Tulio Aimola, Caio Batista de Melo, and Dicksson Rammon Oliveira de Almeida—have spent the year studying and researching alongside Fordham students and faculty.

“Fordham is a wonderful university. It teaches you to grow not just as a professional, but also as a person. I loved my semesters there,” said Guardieiro, a computer science major from Uberlandia, Minas Gerais.

Guardieiro worked with Damian Lyons, PhD, professor of computer and information science, on the use of drones to hunt and kill Aedes aegypti mosquitos, which spread diseases such as dengue and Zika virus, both of which are significant problems in Brazil.

“Different fields were available to research here,” said Batista de Melo, a computer science major from Brazil’s capital, Brasília. Batista de Melo researched with Frank Hsu, PhD, the Clavius Distinguished Professor of Science and Professor of Computer and Information Science, in Fordham’s Laboratory of Informatics and Data Mining.

“Our project used IBM’s Watson, which might not have been possible to use in Brazil, since it is such a new technology.”

The program has benefitted both Fordham and Brazilian students alike, said Carla Romney, DSc, associate dean for STEM and pre-health education, who oversaw BSMP at Fordham. Because it’s difficult for science students to devote a full semester to travel, the experience served as a sort of “reverse study abroad” for Fordham students.

“Having international students in the classroom has been an amazing internationalization experience for Fordham students, too,” Romney said. “It brings a different atmosphere into the classroom when you have students with widely divergent viewpoints and experiences. You get to know other cultures, other worlds.”

BSMP students complete two semesters of academic study at an American institution, followed by a summer of experiential learning in the form of internships, research, volunteering, or other types of “academic training.”

Earlier this summer, the four were joined by an additional 17 BSMP students who had been at other American colleges and universities and who took up residence at Fordham to undertake internships and positions at various New York City companies and organizations.

The experience was challenging both academically as well as personally, said Oliveira, a computer science major from Recife, Pernambuco who researched smartwatch applications in the Wireless Sensor and Data Mining (WISDM) lab with Gary Weiss, PhD, associate professor of computer and information science.

“The cultural shock was really unexpected, and for several months it made me feel uneasy,” Oliveira said. “Over time, I learned to overcome it. Being from a predominantly tropical country, I considered the winter to be the greatest challenge of all.”

In addition to culture shock, there was the inevitable loneliness, which Guardieiro said she felt deeply at times. However, she felt supported by her academic adviser and fellow students, and eventually came to love her newfound independence.

“I learned to never lose an opportunity to do what I needed or wanted to just because I did not have company to do so,” she said. “I learned to expose myself to new—and not always comfortable—experiences, and I was amazed with the results I got. I took dancing classes with great teachers, visited places like Wall Street companies and all kinds of museums, and visited many states by myself.”

The Brazilian government recently put a one-year moratorium on the scholarship exchange program, but Romney said Fordham would continue its partnership with the program when it resumes.

When it does, Guardieiro has advice ready for future Fordham-BSMP students:

“Don’t be afraid to do everything you want to… This kind of experience is given to us to learn as much as we can.”

Stephen Holler doesn’t have any barriers or flagmen stationed outside Freeman Hall, but make no mistake: the Rose Hill building is indeed a construction site.

Holler, an assistant professor of physics and engineering physics, is teaching “Modeling, Simulation, & Design” to undergraduates majoring in physics and engineering physics. The highlight of the class is three 3-D printers that students harness to construct objects as simple as trinkets or as complex as working catapults.  To do it, they learn how to use SolidWorks, a software package that’s the industry standard for mechanical design, and by extension the burgeoning 3-D printing industry.

“They can now create an object, apply forces to it and see how it deforms,” Holler said. “They’re taking their computer experiments and turning them into real world experiments.”

One of the challenges students are tasked with in the class is constructing trusses for a bridge, the strength of which they then have to test. Once students have calculated what the forces or stresses are on the object, they compare that with the simulation, Holler said, and then the actual model.

“They can test the real thing and prove to themselves that physics does actually work.”

Two of the printers extrude a biodegradable filament derived from cornstarch called polylactic acid; the third printer uses acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, a polymer often found in bottles, plates and cups.

Using the printers saves both time and money. They cut the amount of time it takes to construct a prototype of a piece of equipment from weeks to just a day. This is particularly useful if you realize that your original design is not the right one, said Holler— who recalled his own days of designing in the private sector before he came to Fordham.

He once designed a diagnostic tool for measuring mirror reflectivity, everything from the box to most of the components that went on the inside.

“But the way we had sketched one of the pieces was flipped from how the machinist read the drawing,” he said.

The end result, he said, was an expensive reworking—something that a 3-D printer would have likely eliminated.

Last year, for their final project, students were tasked with building catapults. This year they’re building cars, boats, and windmills. Their end project consists of a report with mechanical drawings, a physical model from the printer, and the results of stress, displacement, and frequency vibration testing.

Ryan Wichtowski, a senior engineering physics major, thinks that mastering SolidWorks will make him more employable. For his final project, Wichtowski is building a wind turbine that will require 7 to 10 individual parts. He hopes to go to law school and concentrate on intellectual property law, where 3-D printing is often utilized in creating models for patent applications.

“It is definitely an area of technology where there will be a lot of growth and development, so it would be good to get a good understanding of everything behind it,” he said.

For years, Fordham has offered undergraduate students interested in engineering a 3-2 program, completing their physics coursework at the University in three years and then adding two additional years at Columbia or Case Western Reserve universities. The result is two bachelor’s degrees: one from Fordham in physics and a second from Columbia or Case Western in engineering.

This semester, however, Fordham College at Rose Hill students began enrolling in formal courses leading to a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics.

For Martin Sanzari, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics who spearheaded the development of the program, it is a major step forward for Fordham in meeting the needs of students who intend to pursue engineering careers.

“Now students have the option of a physics degree, the 3-2 program with Columbia or Case Western, or majoring in engineering physics and pursuing graduate study in engineering anywhere in the country,” Sanzari said. “This opens the door to a lot of potential students who want to come to Fordham but who want to be engineers. Many of them ask us, ‘I want to go to graduate school in engineering, can I get there from here?’ My answer is ‘yes you can.’”

Sanzari, who has three degrees in engineering and a Ph.D. in physics, said that the idea for an engineering program came from the students themselves. Over the years, he taught many students who wanted to pursue engineering careers but for whom the 3-2 program was not an option. So he began offering students tutorials on core engineering concepts, such as fluid mechanics and finite analysis.

Before long, Sanzari began considering the idea of moving beyond tutorials and establishing a full-blown program of study. The program was approved by the University a few years ago, and a handful of students have gone through it by taking tutorials taught by Sanzari. This year’s juniors and seniors were the first to enroll in formal courses as part of a structured curriculum.

As structured, the program combines a strong emphasis on physics with a number of engineering courses. Students are required to take four engineering courses that form the core of the program and have the flexibility to enroll in up to four more.

The focus on physics is one of the new program’s strengths, said Quamrul Haider, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Physics.

“A solid background in basic physics principles is necessary to study engineering physics,” he said. “In fact, topics in engineering physics are intimately connected to pure physics. In order to understand engineering physics principles in the areas of laser and optical engineering, medical engineering, semiconductor and electrical engineering, for example, one must have a broad understanding of the theories and fundamentals of optics, biophysics, condensed matter theory and electricity and magnetism.

“Therefore, during the first two years, the students take pure physics courses,” he said. “It’s only in their junior and senior years that they take specialized engineering physics courses.”

Both Haider and Sanzari expect the program to grow steadily in the years ahead. Traditionally, there are many more engineering students than physics majors at the undergraduate level, Sanzari said, so the program has a strong potential to draw students to Fordham who would otherwise opt to go elsewhere.