Ameco opens Prairieville location
Ameco, a construction and maintenance service company, has opened an operations center in Prairieville.
The location at 15089 Airline Highway will support capital construction, operations and maintenance, shutdown and turnaround and disaster relief efforts to engineering, procurement and construction contractors.
Ameco said it is currently working on capital construction projects worth $12 billion from the new facility. The location has 8,000 square feet of office and warehouse space on 6.5 acres.
LSU selected by Amazon as education partner
LSU has been selected as an education partner for Amazon’s Career Choice program, providing hourly employees that live in Louisiana and work for the company access to online and on-campus bachelor’s degrees and short-form college credit certificates.
The university expects to offer degrees and college credit certificates to Amazon employees through LSU, LSU Shreveport, LSU Eunice and LSU Alexandria.
The career choice program allows employees to learn new skills. In the U.S., Amazon is investing $1.2 billion to upskill more than 300,000 employees by 2025 to help move them into higher-paying, in-demand jobs.
For information on Amazon’s Career Choice, visit aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/career-choice.
Red Stick Social expands hours, announces new management
After cutting back hours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Red Stick Social is back to operating seven days a week.
The Government Street business offers bowling, live music, private event space, food and drinks spread across five levels.
The business has a new senior management team.
Michael Hueffer is general manager. The Baton Rouge native has more than 30 years of high-volume service industry and hospitality management experience.
Derrick Milton, executive chef, is another Baton Rouge native. He has more than 25 years of culinary experience
Julie Ybarra, acting sales director, has more than 20 years of corporate and event sales and management experience.
Later this month, Red Stick Social will begin improvements and upgrades to its outdoor green space including the installation of a large, permanent outdoor stage and all-weather artificial surface to replace the existing temporary stage and grass surface. Further planned improvements to the outdoor space include the addition of a container bar, shade structures and seating. Interior improvements are also planned to enhance food and beverage offerings along with expanded private event and entertainment space.
LSU computer science professor studies smartphone security
Chen Wang, an assistant professor of computer science at LSU, is working on a gripping-hand verification method that ensures the correct user is holding a smartphone before displaying potentially sensitive content, such as incoming calls, emails or app notifications.
Wang is working with third-year doctoral student Long Huang on the security measures.
When a notification tone is played, the phone’s mic records the sound. An AI-based algorithm processes the sound and extracts biometric features to match with the user’s feature profile, or recorded hand grip. If there is a match, the verification is successful, and the notification preview is displayed on the screen.
Because music sounds are signals, they can