Twelve #PurduePolytechnic alumni received awards celebrating their noteworthy contributions to Purdue, their industries, and the world of technology as a whole.

Purdue Polytechnic's Robert Nawrocki is spearheading a USDA-funded project, incorporating colleagues from Purdue's Colleges of Agriculture and Engineering. This offers a rare opportunity for sponsored research between three distinct colleges at Purdue.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214860422006376?via%3Dihub

Purdue Polytechnic’s Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar is one of seven scholars named to the University of Adelaide’s first-ever class of international fellows. They will add their own behavioral and technical expertise to the university’s research in methods to identify and catch online child predators.

At the University of Adelaide, Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar recently presented research at a conference that she also successfully co-founded and organized within the past year, all designed to bring together partner institutions charged with combatting sexual abuse of minors. Read more:

Uniform Sierra Aerospace, a drone manufacturer co-founded with Polytechnic alumni, has created the new Panther drone model, made in United States and designed for “first responders [in] search-and-rescue cases in outdoor settings.”

Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar has continued her relationship with the criminology unit in Spain's University of Valencia, leading to a new grant from Google that seeks to identify signs of online child grooming both in the U.S. and abroad.

Purdue Polytechnic recently hosted a dedication for its new smart manufacturing labs, designed to prepare students for the factory of the future. Engineering technology faculty have already begun shaping new curricula around these state-of-the-art facilities.

An interdisciplinary team of Purdue Polytechnic researchers received National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to study how teams of humans and robots will work together at construction sites. The team hopes the NSF grant will serve as the foundation for years of collaborative research to improve the efficiency and scalability of human-robot teams in constrained and complex construction workplaces.

Undergraduate and graduate students in Purdue Polytechnic presented posters summarizing their 2021-2022 research projects. Student research projects affiliated with the Polytechnic’s Holistic Safety and Security research impact area are summarized here.

Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar, associate professor of computer and information technology, has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar for her work in cybersecurity — specifically, for her upcoming research that will analyze the criminological differences and online grooming strategies of child sexual exploitation offenders in Spain, train Spanish law enforcement officers, and conduct community safety seminars.