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Six electrical engineering students at South Dakota State University are among 244 students nationwide to have been selected for a prestigious scholarship in the power and energy field. Students selected to receive the Power and Energy Society Scholarship Plus Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers are described as “high achievers with strong GPAs with distinctive extracurricular commitments and are committed to exploring the power and energy field.” The awards are for $3,000, except three-time recipients receive $4,000. The IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization with 500,000 members in more than 190 nations and 189,000 student members. The SDSU selections are Nick Erickson, Nick Ankrum, Cole Brown, Cyrus Nelson, Jaxon Lohnes and Connor Delehant.

Subash Thapa, a doctoral student in the South Dakota State University Department of Agronomy, Horticulture and Plant Science, has distinguished himself with several recent recognitions for his research and academic achievements.

Nick Erickson, a senior electrical engineering major from Pierce, Nebraska, Erickson is the recipient of the major scholarship — the Center for Power Systems Studies Outstanding Senior Scholarship — a $5,000 award. Also,

Selections for the fourth class of Future Innovators of America Fellowships have been announced by the Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering.  The eight recipients and the department which selected them are:  • Maxwell Donelan, mathematics and statistics  • Tennille Eremas and John Akujobi, both computer science • Keaton Ranslem, civil engineering • Connor Matthies and William O’Connell, both mechanical engineering • Eli Otten and Gabrielle Robbins, both construction and concrete industry management.

AeroFly, a Brookings-based aerospace company bred from South Dakota State University research, has been selected by NASA to test and advance its innovative technology. If successful, it could help enable the first long-term presence of humans on the moon and may even allow for deep space exploration.

For the fifth consecutive year, Yucheng Liu, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at South Dakota State University, has been named to the Stanford University-Elsevier World’s Top 2% Scientists’ list. The compilation is based on the number of times a scientist’s papers are cited in another scientist’s papers. Liu’s writings have been cited a total of 1,966 times with 377 of them occurring in 2024. Liu, the Duane Sander Endowed Professor, has served as department head since 2021 and is a Distinguished Member of the American Society for Engineering Education.

Turner Marr, a mechanical engineering senior from Buffalo, Minnesota, wanted to become a doctor when he enrolled at South Dakota State University in fall 2022. That lasted all of one semester. The switch from biochemistry premed to mechanical engineering had nothing to do with the sight of blood or the thought of working on a cadaver. He simply wanted a major that required more math while allowing hands-on learning. He found that in mechanical engineering and in December 2024 was selected by the college as a Future Innovator of America.

This summer, Delaney Baumberger, a mechanical engineering graduate student at South Dakota State University, spent ten weeks working among some of the nation’s top aerospace scientists at the Air Force Research Lab in Dayton, Ohio. Baumberger and her adviser, associate professor Jeffrey Doom, collaborated with Air Force Research Lab researchers to run advanced computational fluid dynamics simulations for hypersonic scramjet engines, experimental engines that burn fuel at speeds above Mach 5. Their work explored how engine geometry affects combustion stability and performance at extreme speeds. .

In the early 2000s, South Dakota State University used the tagline “You can go anywhere from here” in a number of ads to feature students and alumni who used SDSU as a launching pad to a variety of study abroad locations and high-profile careers. One of the featured students was Ryan Lefers, a farm kid from Corsica studying agricultural engineering, who had participated in a study abroad program in Egypt. The North African country would be just the start of Lefers’ Middle Eastern adventures.

Before South Dakota was a state, before the Dakota Agricultural College became South Dakota State University and even before the United States Weather Bureau, the precursor to the National Weather Service, was formed, there were people who recognized the value of collecting weather data. The first iteration of a weather station in Brookings began recording daily temperature and precipitation totals on July 1, 1888.