Fireworks will light up the sky this Fourth of July and the city will be aglow with the products of mechanical engineering.

Nearly 100 students from 50 schools in the Memphis area got their first taste of engineering through the West Tennessee STEM Hub's Bridges to Engineering summer program. 

Sohail Tufail, a research graduate student working with Herff’s Department of Civil Engineering chair Dr. Rouzbeh Nazari, spent his summer participating in the 2026 Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institute at the University of Alabama, a seven-week program that brings together PhD students from across the country to enhance their flood modeling research skills.

It’s easy for engineering students to get consumed by research and spend all their time in study rooms or labs. But during the summer of 2026, Herff College of Engineering sophomore Madison Nolen found inspiration in a different environment: the stage.

While students at the Herff College of Engineering enjoyed their summer break, Dean Okenwa Okoli spent the time between semesters more than 6,000 miles away recruiting the next generation of Herff students.

Dr. Chrysanthe Preza received a $478,511 award from the National Science Foundation for the proposal “REU Site: Artificial Intelligence in Multidisciplinary Engineering Research for Guided Exploration (AI-MERGE)”.