In July, the campus hosted the Second Annual Student Shop Safety Conference. This conference drew participants from various institutions across the country: Duke University, Yale, Cal Poly, UC Davis, Purdue, Virginia Tech, Tulane, Vanderbilt, and Texas A&M to name a few.

According to the conference director Steven Sheffield (Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering), the purpose of this conference was to explore meaningful ways to address the need for safety program development in the growing student shop/maker space environment.

As the host campus, participants had an opportunity to tour various student shops/maker spaces, network with colleagues from various universities, and participate in engaging and meaningful presentations.

Some of the topics discussed were safety, training, shop procedures, instrumentation, use of design software, and simulating virtual machining software. Next year’s conference will be held at Northwestern University in mid-July 2017.