A collection of the student, alumni, faculty and staff experiences
Dr. Steven Grant, Missouri S&T associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Photo by B.A. Rupert
Inside a non-descript, soundproof building on the south side of town, researchers from Missouri University of Science of Technology are building an audio battlefield, complete with the sounds of tanks, ordnance, gunfire, shouting and helicopters. Called an immersive audio environment, the testbed facility is leading the way in an effort to better prepare soldiers for combat.
Illustration by Jason Bourque, University of Florida
Carlos Jaramillo (far left), Missouri S&T alumnus. Photo submitted
The hefty vertebrae of Titanoboa (right) dwarfs that of a modern anaconda. Photo by Jason Head and John Bloch, University of Florida
As miners dig deeper and deeper into an open coal pit in Colombia, millions of years of history are displaced. On a fossil-hunting expedition to one of these pits in 2006, Carlos Jaramillo’s team found some big bones that belonged to a super-sized creature.
Sixty million years ago, not long after the dinosaurs died out, the tropics were warmer than they are today. And the creatures, though not dinosaurs, were bigger. Jaramillo, who earned a master’s degree at Missouri S&T in 1995, is a scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. He figured the vertebrae he found belonged to a massive crocodile.
“Two years later, a student compared the vertebrae to the skeleton of a modern anaconda,” says Jaramillo. “Then we thought, ‘ah, yes, we have a big snake!'”
This constrictor, now considered to be the largest snake to have ever slithered the Earth, would have made a modern day anaconda look like a glorified earthworm. Jaramillo says his team actually ended up finding the fossils of 28 different snakes, ranging in size from 40 to 50 feet long with a weight in the neighborhood of 2,500-pounds.
Alexandria Merritt, Missouri S&T alumna. Photo by Mary Gillespie Photography
If not for a conversation with her best friend while walking across campus during her junior year in high school, Alexandria Merritt is not sure what professional path she would have pursued.
One day as she was switching classes at Normandy (Mo.) High School, she asked her best friend about her career plans. When her friend told her she was planning to become a chemical engineer, Merritt replied, “Me too.”
“I didn’t even know anything about engineering, but I decided that if she could do that, so could I,” Merritt says. After graduation she enrolled at St. Louis Community College’s Florissant Valley campus through the Emerson Minority Scholarship Program, then transferred to Missouri S&T.
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