Year in pictures: Charlie Leight

Players view Tillman Statue for first time

By Charlie Leight |
December 22, 2017

The gift of photography is its ability to capture a moment, take it outside its boundaries and expand it for observers in other locations and time. These pictures capture snippets of times and events from the 2017 history of Arizona State University and deliver them to you on your computer, tablet or phone, at your convenience. It has been my incredible privilege to bring them to you. These moments tell the story of the rich Sun Devil life: the research, innovation, leaders, successes, inspiration and victories.

These images are for you, so that you, too, may be a witness to the moments. Discover research that observes life on the Earth’s surface, overhead and way beyond. Find out about the people who gave their time, their capital and their lives to take us into the future. And share the times that made us feel great about living the Sun Devil life.

A few of the hive's 50,000 bees consume honey from the finger of School of Life Sciences' Honey Bee Research Lab project manager Osman Kaftanoglu at the facility near the Polytechnic campus. Work at the lab includes research on colony collapse disorder, artificial insemination of queen bees, long-term storage of bee sperm and territorial patterns of bees.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Entomology postdoctoral researcher Christina Kwapich takes a sample of ants from a colony in the South Mountain Park/Preserve. Kwapich says the colonies there can be 20 or more feet deep, with the queen residing at the bottom and food stores in the midsection. Her recent research has focused on counting the annual turnover of worker ants within colonies.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
A group of doctoral students, along with Assistant Professor Heni Ben Amor, experiment with their C-Turtle robot, an informal mobile robot that learns how to navigate various terrain, in Papago Park. The movements of sea turtles inspired the robot, made of $70 worth of parts.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Joshua Rose is working on his first astronomy class assignment — observe the solar eclipse and draw pictures of it every 15 minutes. He and hundreds other students, staff and members of the community gathered on Hayden Lawn to witness the solar eclipse Aug. 21. Viewed from Tempe, the moon blocked out about 70 percent of the sun at its peak.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Researcher Kate Fisher prepares a screen-printing machine before printing with a silver-based paste at the Solar Power Laboratory at ASU's Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies Engineering Research Center at the ASU Research Park. The goal of the center is to drive up solar energy efficiency while driving down the cost.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
A student finds quiet study space on the second floor of the new Student Pavilion across from the Memorial Union. The 74,653-square-foot structure provides classrooms, spaces for study and socializing and offices for student groups. It is a Net Zero Energy building designed to meet ASU's goals for Climate Net Neutrality and sustainable building systems.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Piccolo player Roxanne Jones is reflected in the glasses of fellow ASU Sun Devil Marching Band piccolo player Lauren Henry before the beginning of the annual Homecoming Parade. Both musicians are juniors studying biology.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Newly announced ASU head football coach Herm Edwards talks with members of the media, staff and Sun Devil football players. This is Edwards' second chance to be a Sun Devil as he was recruited to play by the late Frank Kush. After he finished his nine years of announcing at ESPN, he began recruiting for next season. "Football ignites my soul," he said.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Former U.S. Sens. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. (left), and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., discuss "Disagreement and Civil Dialogue on American Politics and Civic Culture." The event was part of the "Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education and American Society" series sponsored by the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Army veterans David Kline (left), Asha Dozithee and Jimmy Dennis pose after they and 154 other veterans received their graduation stoles at the Spring 2017 Veterans Honor Stole Ceremony at ASU Gammage. Kline received his BS in Nutrition, Dozithee earned her BS in Tourism Management and Dennis was awarded an MA in Emergency Management and Homeland Security.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams (center right) chats with ASU Provost Mark Searle (left), Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan and Phoenix attorney David Bodney (right) before his talk on free speech on campus at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Ambassador Barbara Barrett talks with John Demery, 13, during the grand opening of the new permanent home of the Gary K. Herberger Young Scholars Academy on the ASU West campus. The academy is a private school with 62 highly gifted students enrolled in grades 7-12. It first opened in fall 2011.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Kathy Attwood talks with family friend Dennis Farrell after the Veterans Memorial Wall dedication near the Pat Tillman Veterans Center in the Memorial Union. Attwood is the sister of fallen Sun Devil John T. Conry, who died on May 9, 1972, in Vietnam.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
MacArthur "Genius Grant" recipient and Institute Professor Liz Lerman takes a walk with President Michael Crow in the ASU Art Museum as part of her "Minds on the Move: The Treadmill Tapes." The two walked and talked for 55 minutes, covering 2.5 miles worth of topics including their backgrounds, evolution, the necessity of higher education and the future.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Aeronautical and aerospace engineering senior Nathaniel Struebel wheels the full-scale LunaH-Map model to the sixth-floor Hardgrove Lab in ISTB4. The 3-D printed model is showing the challenges scientists will have in manufacturing the lunar-mapping CubeSat that is planned to launch in December 2019.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Pilot LT Blake Glass talks about the afterburners as he gives the Naval ROTC a tour of an EA-18G Growler, a modified version of the F-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, at Cutter Aviation in Phoenix. The jet and flight staff is based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington. Two of the jets flew over Sun Devil Stadium as part of Salute to Service football game.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Patina artist Aiya Jordan uses a blowtorch to paint a ferric nitrate solution to the bronze Pat Tillman statue to enhance the lighter gold coloring, at the Bollinger Atelier workshop in Mesa. The slightly larger-than-life statue of the ASU legend was unveiled Aug. 30 at the north end of Frank Kush Field, inside Sun Devil Stadium.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Members of this year's football team check out the newly unveiled Tillman statue at the entrance of the new Tillman Tunnel. The statue was commissioned by Arthur Pearce II and created by Jeff Davenport. Athletic Director Ray Anderson; Arthur Pearce II; Pat's brother, Kevin Tillman; Pat's former roommate and teammate BJ Alford and Coach Todd Graham spoke before the unveiling.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Global Launch international students Josh Jacob from Korea (left) and Kana Yuasa and Saki Tomita from Japan get ready to celebrate the season's first touchdown at Sun Devil Stadium to start the 2017 ASU football season, as one of the largest and highest-resolution video screens in the country shows the replay.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Fireworks, singers and band members from the School of Music mark the conclusion of the celebration of the past, present and future of ASU and the kickoff of the final drive of Campaign ASU 2020 at Chase Field. The goal is to raise at least $1.5 billion by 2020, with $1 billion already raised since the campaign's inception in 2010.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Marcia Oppong (left) and Maria Portillo hold their balloons after the Fall 2017 Undergraduate Commencement. Oppong earned a BA in Broadcast Journalism, and Portillo earned a BS in Journalism and Mass Communication. More than 5,575 students graduated with bachelor's degrees at the ceremony.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

AZLoop at SpaceX

Elon Musk threw down the gauntlet: create a prototype of a high-speed carrier that will transport people and cargo at more than 700 miles per hour to connect cities and regions around the world. ASU accepted the challenge.

We told the stories of the more than 100 students — from ASU, the ASU Thunderbird School of Global Management, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, and Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff — who designed, built and tested their entry for the SpaceX Hyperloop II Pod Competition. It took the students thousands of hours and many sleepless nights to build the high-speed pod. The singular objective: build and test the fastest vehicle.

AZLoop finished in the top eight out of 35 teams in the second hyperloop competition sponsored by SpaceX.

After a grueling week of technical reviews and track tests, only three teams earned the honor of propelling their pods down vacuum-encased I-beam track at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Five teams, including AZLoop, were unable to compete in the final round of testing due to lack of daylight and not enough time for all eight teams to complete trial runs in the SpaceX tube.

Knowing their vehicle is able to compete at the highest levels, AZLoop is more than ready to take up the gauntlet again at next year’s Hyperloop III. See their journey so far in the photos below.

Two generations of hyperloop mock-ups sit on a cabinet in the AZLoop studio in the Simulator Building on the Polytechnic campus. Hyperloop is a proposed ultra-high-speed transportation system with passenger and freight pods traveling through near-vacuum tubes. Teams can use wheels, magnetic levitation or air bearings (or fans).

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Project co-lead Lynne Nethken listens as Josh Kosar updates the evening's priorities. The students were working on the Hyperloop Final Design Package they'd soon submit to Space X officials. The 85-member team, AZLoop, is made up of engineers, business and design students from the ASU campuses as well as students from NAU and Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Brake systems team lead Quoc Lam talks with his team about various options to stop their vehicle at a speed faster than 300 miles per hour.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
AZLoop team members listen to a question from SpaceX officials following their presentation of the AZLoop's Hyperloop Final Design Package. The team would soon hear that they'd been selected to proceed to the step in the competition of building a prototype.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Lynne Nethken talks through video chat with students from Prescott's Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University following the announcement that AZLoop was one of 24 finalist teams selected from a field of 1,300 entries in SpaceX's Hyperloop Pod Competition.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Mechanical Systems Engineering seniors Anthony Spadafore (left) and Christian Reischauer, mechanical team co-leads, look over plans to build supports for a wooden base for the 50-foot indoor test track on the Polytechnic campus. Behind them is the task list of projects and due dates.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Dynamics sub-team lead Kilash Kuppurah cuts a 4 mm piece of aluminum on the bandsaw in the early stages of building a ¼-scale prototype of the team's competition pod. The team expected to finish the 3½-foot-long car in two weeks. Afterward, it would devote its attention to building the 14-foot-long pod to take to the August competition in California.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Levitation team lead Megan Moore, a physics senior, prepares to shave a groove in one of the levitation housing array modules. At this point, the team was nearly finished machining the four modules that they'd soon test on the prototype and test track.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Anthony Spadafore adds another shim to level the 50-foot outdoor test track outside the AZLoop team workshop. The team later built a 250-foot-long track for testing the full-size vehicle.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Mechanical team members Gokul Chandrasekaran (left) and Hamanshu Dave move the bottom layers of cut sheets of compressed wood that they'll stack into layers to make the shape of the 14-foot competition pod. The group was cutting more than 25 layers that week that they’d soon stack, sand and treat then cover it with carbon fiber to make the high-speed vehicle shell.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Chandler-Gilbert Community College student Ernest Poteat (left) guides ASU's Gokul Chandrasekaran and Himanshu Dave (right) on making a Bondo Filler patch. The mechanical team practiced and developed skills they'd soon use on the full-size model that they covered with carbon fiber sheets.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
If any team member has a free moment, the task board has a vast list of needs to be completed for the AZLoop team's vehicle. With less than a month to go before taking the pod to the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition in California, much of the testing was complete and the final assembly was underway.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Project co-leads Lynne Nethken and Josh Kosar talk about the projects that need to be worked on at the weekly Friday afternoon meeting.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Members of the levitation team work on prepping components to get them ready for welding onto the chassis.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Himanshu Dave and Kylie Graham discuss the task of applying the first of three layers of carbon fiber to the back half (right) of the team's Hyperloop vehicle model. Graham is a friend of some of the team members and works as a carbon fiber technician in the aerospace industry.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Gokul Chandrasekaran (left) and Julie Pham, both in mechanical engineering, apply the second piece of the first of three layers of carbon fiber to the back half of the team's Hyperloop vehicle model.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Marcos Valenzuela (left) gets a hand-held light from Prerack Doangonkar as he works on connecting wiring harnesses on the AZLoop chassis. The braking arrays are visible on the underside of the chassis. At this point there was less than a week, and a lot of testing to do, before the team took the vehicle to the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition near Los Angeles.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
SpaceX founder, CEO and CTO Elon Musk speaks during the finals of the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II on the SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California. Musk explained that the competitor in the vacuum chamber, Swissloop, was having technical problems and would need time to pressure up the chamber, then pressure it down again.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
AZLoop project co-lead Josh Kosar talks with the media at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition. While the AZLoop team was one of the top point earners in a week's worth of tests, it was not one of the three finalists to race in the 1.25-kilometer-long Hyperloop vacuum chamber.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
AZLoop team members remove the front shell at the booth at the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition II on the SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California.

Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now