Some of California Baptist University’s students and faculty attended the third annual Long Night of Arts and Innovation in downtown Riverside Oct. 8, showcasing innovations in science and the arts.
Dr. Anthony Donaldson, dean of the Gordon and Jill Bourns College of Engineering, who was recently honored as the Mayor’s Innovation Honoree at the Riverside City Council, was in the original group of attendees at the “The Long Night of Science in Erlangen,” along with Riverside Mayor William “Rusty” Bailey III.
“We drove by the engineering building in Erlangen, Germany, at 1:30 in the morning and saw a line out the building because they had 30,000 people attending, and we knew we wanted to bring this back to Riverside,” Donaldson said.
The first two years of the Long Night of Arts and Innovation in Riverside consisted of student projects such as Leonardo Da Vinci machines, the pan hammer and numerous robotic displays.
“We’re proud of our students,” Donaldson said. “Most of our projects here are almost all done by our freshmen within their first month of school.”
Among the incoming 200 new freshmen engineering students were displays of projects with teams of an average of four students.
“Our project is a bio controller with the basic principle is that when people flex, the EMG signals from your muscles are put through an amplifier and we’re able to harness that power to power a toy car,” said Aidan Kelly, freshman mechanical engineering major.
Numerous other projects could be handled by the Long Night of Arts and Innovation attendees.
“We have advanced medical dummies that blink, breathe and have pulses,” said Jeremy Espinosa, senior nursing major.
Espinosa explained students from the School of Nursing were teaching attendees how to listen to lung and heart sounds with disposable stethoscopes on mannequins.
Jared Adams, freshman electric engineering major, said his team built a 3D printer using Google SketchUp for the template to make a 3D cross with CBU engraved in the center.
“Most of the work we do is working with hardware calibration, software setup and coming up with these drawings,” Adams said.
The freshmen engineer and nursing students received guidance and ideas from department leadership.
“The students choose from a list of projects and have four weeks to learn how to use and assemble the projects,” said Dr. Matthew Rickard, chair for the bioengineering department.
The Long Night of Arts and Innovation event will continue to exhibit the Riverside community’s talents every other year to show off innovations made on campus.
