A S P E C I A L P U B L I C AT I O N O F C H A P M A N M A GA Z I N E â– W I N T E R
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Art Meets Science
New Keck Center for Science and Engineering Opens This Fall
Engineers of
Executive Editor:
Sheryl Bourgeois, Ph.D. Executive Vice President for University Advancement
Inspiration ellular shapes permeate eight layers of lighted glass, evoking the biological structures and energy connecting all life on our planet. It’s an artwork that reshapes the language of painting, while mixing in hints of sculpture as well. The powerful work will greet everyone who enters the Keck Center for Science and Engineering, projecting a unique welcome to Chapman’s new home of novel exploration. “This work will interact with viewers in meaningful ways, and that will encourage them to ask questions, just like a scientist or engineer would,” says Andrew Lyon, dean of the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University. “It forces you to not be told what you’re looking at. It’s a great way to engage our students and introduce the public to the excitement of what we’re doing here.” Welcome to the winter issue of Chapman Now, which we at Chapman Magazine have dedicated to the builders and innovators who inspire Chapman’s new Fowler School of Engineering and its incubator, the Keck Center for Science and Engineering. On these pages you’ll learn how the Fowler School of Engineering, set to debut in 2020, will link to efforts aimed at addressing many of the most urgent needs
Editor:
Dennis Arp arp@chapman.edu Staff Writer:
Dawn Bonker (MFA ’19) bonker@chapman.edu Design:
Hayden Design Editorial Office:
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Peter Bynum
facing our region, our nation and our world. You’ll also meet some of the students, faculty and alumni already making a difference as engineers of inspiration. By displaying on our cover a panel from artist Peter Bynum’s multi-layered creation of biomorphic imagery, we seek to invite our own conversation about universal forms, creative influences and enduring connections. “As an artist, few things are as gratifying as having big conversations with big audiences,” says Bynum, who calls his unique artistic medium illuminated painting. “It’s exciting for me to imagine science and engineering students – for that matter, anyone who goes into the Keck Center – being face to face with the rhythms of the living universe. My hope is that this work serves as a reminder of the interconnectedness of all living things.” Through design and fabrication of his multi-ton work, Bynum has been forced to stare down more than a few weighty challenges, with more to come during installation. “This has been a true journey of exploration, complete with failure, midcourse corrections and constant evolution of techniques, both artistic and technological,” Bynum notes. “All in all, quite a feat of engineering.”
ON THESE PAGES YOU’LL LEARN HOW THE FOWLER SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND THE KECK CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING WILL WORK TO ADDRESS MANY OF SOCIETY’S MOST URGENT NEEDS. YOU’LL ALSO MEET SOME OF THE CHAPMAN STUDENTS, FACULTY AND ALUMNI ALREADY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THEIR FIELDS.
Engineers, from left, Erik Linstead ’01, Ph.D., Katie Lamkin ’16, Lindsey Hughes ’10 (M.S. ’13) and Rene German ’05 tour the Keck Center for Science and Engineering, where progress arcs toward a fall culmination of the largest building project in Chapman’s history.
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AT THE KECK CENTER AND THROUGHOUT CHAPMAN, THE FOWLER SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING IS ADVANCING FROM CONCEPT TO REALITY. LET THE GRAND CHALLENGES BEGIN. By Robyn Norwood “When I went to engineering school, it was very traditionally based, with the stereotype of an engineer who had a pocket protector and a slide rule,” says Thomas Piechota, Ph.D., PE, a civil and environmental engineer who is the University’s vice president for research. “What Chapman wants to do is train engineers in the new way, and to take on the new grand challenges.” Those ambitions align with national efforts to address some of society’s most pressing problems. “That’s really what engineers can be at the center of: making a difference,” Piechota says. The future is literally under construction, as workers complete the $130 million Keck Center for Science and Engineering for a fall 2018 opening. Still ahead, the engineering wing must be built out; there are labs to outfit and, very importantly,
professors to hire: Chapman’s commitment to the Fowler School of Engineering is made clear by the 30 to 35 new faculty members the University will hire in addition to the $30 million in capital expenditures targeted for engineering over the next five years. The plan is for the first undergraduate class in computer engineering to enter in fall 2020. Then the first class pursuing a master’s in computer science will begin in 2021, with the first undergraduate class in electrical engineering to follow in 2022, says Andrew Lyon, Ph.D., dean of the Schmid College of Science and Technology. Other specializations – possibly mechanical engineering, environmental and civil engineering, as well as bioengineering – will emerge later. “It’s built upon the outstanding bones of computer science and data analytics and computational science here,” Lyon
Photo by Nathan Worden ’13 (M.A. ’15, MBA ’18)
nly a few decades ago, the word engineer summoned images of machines, bridges, electrical grids and chemical production plants. To some, it even meant the man – and it was inevitably a man – who drove a locomotive. Today it can mean anything imaginable. Engineers design the medical devices that save lives and fuel Orange County’s healthcare technology industry. They create the hardware and software that make knowledge leap to screens at the tap of a finger or the sound of a voice. They build the apps that ease commutes or make distant loved ones seem near, and they send the communications satellites into space that make it all possible. It is into this world that Chapman University will launch the Fowler School of Engineering in 2020.
A rendering shows the McCardle Family Collaboration Stairs, a central feature of the Keck Center for Science and Engineering. W I N T E R 2 018
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Photo by Dennis Arp
Louis Ehwerhemuepha (M.S. ’13, Ph.D. ’15), right, is a data scientist for CHOC Children’s hospital who meets weekly with Chapman faculty mentor Cyril Rakovski, Ph.D., to help advance research projects. says, describing how the Fowler School of Engineering is designed as an organic outgrowth of the strengths and existing ethos of Chapman, which already has a thriving program in software engineering. “What are the other things that Chapman does well? We are really good at educating people to be broad critical thinkers. We’re really good at – and I think getting a lot better at – the whole global citizen idea, that people have a very broad view of how they fit into the world. We educate students who can communicate well, people who work across boundaries very well.” That broad-based approach “means the engineers we put out know how to talk to people who aren’t engineers and scientists,” Lyon adds. Lyon and Erik Linstead ’01, Ph.D., director of undergraduate computing programs in the Schmid College of Science and Technology, have ample support. They are guided by President Daniele Struppa, an internationally recognized mathematician; Provost Glenn Pfeiffer, Ph.D., an expert in accounting and financial analysis; Piechota, an engineer; and University officers who include industry leaders such as Guy Abramo, CEO of General Information Services, a leading 6
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DEMAND FOR ENGINEERS IS INCREASING. FOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS, JOB GROWTH PROJECTS AT A WHOPPING 24 PERCENT. background-check provider; Joe Kiani, founder, chairman and CEO of the medical technology company Masimo; James V. Mazzo, global president for ophthalmic devices for the German company Carl Zeiss Meditec; and James J. ( Jim) Peterson, chairman and CEO of semiconductor manufacturer Microsemi. All hire engineers, and demand is so high that they sometimes hire internationally. Demand for engineers in general is increasing: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the projected job growth for computer hardware engineers by 2026 is 5 percent, with a current median salary of $115,000. For electrical engineers, it’s 7 percent at a median of $96,000. Software developers – a category that includes workers with backgrounds in
software engineering and computer science, both focuses of the Fowler School – earn a median of $102,000, with a whopping 24 percent projected job growth. “No. 1, science mixed with ethics and art makes the best results, and given Chapman’s history of ethics and art, bringing in a college of engineering will do a lot of good for society,” says Masimo’s Kiani. “I also think Chapman can have a much higher rate of graduates that get fulfillment and good jobs when we also have engineering as a school.” Though students are eager to major in engineering, competition is keen. Three of the top five engineering schools in the U.S. News & World Report rankings are in California, and nine of the top-40 ranked schools are in the Golden State. But admission rates are daunting: Six of those schools admit fewer than 25 percent of applicants to their undergraduate engineering programs. None admit 50 percent. Chapman’s Fowler School of Engineering can represent opportunity. Some scholarship money already is included in the budget, but the first students might have broad access to scholarships if further fundraising efforts succeed.
“STUDENTS CAN COME SOMEPLACE WHERE THEY SEE A DIFFERENT KIND OF ENGINEERING PROGRAM THAT IS MUCH MORE FOCUSED ON THE INDIVIDUAL … AND PROVIDES THOSE STUDENTS WITH THE SUPPORT THEY NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL.”
“It would be wonderful to be able to offer full scholarships to extremely highachieving students to make up our first cohort,” Lyon says. “One doesn’t want to start a school of engineering without really making a serious effort at securing the best and the brightest students for that school.” Opportunity strikes at the core of what engineering offers. Linstead was a first-generation college student whose father riveted airframes for Boeing in Long Beach. “Right before he retired in 2008, I think my dad was making $31.70 an hour at Boeing, and I started my first job at Boeing for $32.66,” says Linstead, who earned an undergraduate degree from Chapman, a master’s from Stanford and later a Ph.D. from UC Irvine. “My dad was just really proud. He put a kid through school and it was almost like this sigh of relief: The kid is in good shape.” Many companies that hire engineers have significant outreach efforts toward
traditionally underrepresented minorities. A four-year engineering degree can help vault such students into the middle class. “Engineering has this opportunity to be a really nice funnel for students who come from those experiences,” says Lyon, mentioning the Orange County Department of Education’s OC Pathways initiative, which includes an engineering emphasis, as well as Santa Ana’s Samueli Academy among Chapman’s outreach efforts. “Students can come someplace where they see a different kind of engineering program that is much more focused on the individual, just like Chapman is across the board, and provides those students with the support they need to be successful.” Women also are traditionally underrepresented in engineering, making up less than 20 percent of engineering students and holding less than 10 percent of engineering jobs. “One thing I’m really proud of with the existing computer science program is
we’re about 30 percent female, so we’re well above the national average,” Linstead says, noting that about 60 to 70 percent of students who work in his machine-learning and computer science lab are women. Linstead points with pride to the program’s focus on socially impactful projects. “We’re doing this because it has the potential to change lives. That puts a different light on it,” he says. “It’s not just a boys’ club or geeking out to geek out – which, I mean, we still do a fair amount of that. I think it’s nice for people to see there are broader goals.” They are goals meant to fit with this University, in this place, at this time. “It’s a great program,” Microsemi’s Peterson says. “And it’s great for Orange County.” Mazzo agrees. “This has been well thought-out, well planned – and if you’ll pardon the pun – well engineered.”
Professor Linstead directs Chapman’s undergraduate computing programs, which focus on socially impactful projects. “We’re doing this because it has the potential to change lives,” he says. W I N T E R 2 018
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GET YOUR MOTOR RUNNING A
nyone who says that engineering doesn’t involve emotion needs to spend an afternoon at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson, Calif. An hour behind the wheel of a 500-horsepower, adrenaline-pushing rocket from Stuttgart is enough to make anyone a believer. The howl of the exhaust, the feeling of the track through the steering wheel, and the sensation of being pinned to your seat as you accelerate out of a turn are all part of an experience that turns steel, aluminum and carbon fiber into something living and breathing. It’s enough to make even the most scientific among us temporarily forget that, at 180 miles per hour, the laws of physics are conspiring to kill you if, for one moment, you lose respect for the fact that the only thing holding the car to the concrete is four pieces of rubber. Engineers, at heart, are builders. While the tools of the trade vary from discipline to discipline, the act of engineering is all about fabricating something greater than the sum of its parts. Whether it’s millions of lines of 8
CHAPMAN NOW
By Erik Linstead ’01 and Andrew Lyon
software source code, a satellite or a sports car, the goal is almost always as much about form and experience as it is about function. To be sure, the process, without exception, requires an intimate knowledge of mathematics, science and computation. There is a story behind every number and calculation, and that story needs to be heeded to satisfy requirements. Equally important, however, is the intuition that tells an engineer whether the story will have a happy ending. If the ending doesn’t meet or exceed expectations, creativity must reshape the plot in a way that is principled and rational but ultimately focuses on the end-user experience. For those of us in the academy, building the Fowler School of Engineering from the ground up is a once-in-a-career opportunity. We who have roots in engineering careers are revved to develop programs and classes that differentiate great engineers from good ones. By leveraging Chapman’s culture of personalized education, we are reaching across disciplines to sharpen a project-
based curriculum as we also cultivate industry partnerships. At some institutions, this might be a challenge; at Chapman, this is already something we do well. Very well indeed. In multiple ways, we are weaving experiential learning into the Fowler School of Engineering, guided by the project-based work already in place at the Schmid College of Science and Technology. Schmid College’s Grand Challenges Initiative (chapman.edu/GCI) immerses students in meaningful teamdriven experiences from their very first day on campus. Launched in fall 2017, the program is designed to grow and evolve in a way that meshes with future curricula, enabling our engineering students to build partnerships that bridge disciplines as they find purposes for their passions. For those drawn to engineering, a key purpose is to work with a diverse array of specialists. Though the vocabulary of these varied fields often differs, participants embrace collaborative experience, and the knowledge that what
Building the Fowler School of Engineering from the ground up is a once-in-a-career opportunity. We who have roots in engineering careers are revved to develop programs and classes that differentiate great engineers from good ones.
results is often much greater than what could be achieved individually. At Chapman, some of our most innovative research involves experts from across the arts and sciences. Now we add engineering to the equation as we support students’ drive to innovate and invent throughout their time at the University. What’s more, our experiential approach will feature a deliberate and unrelenting focus on partnerships with industry. Our goal is to eliminate all barriers between academic and professional cultures. The two will be free to blend as students work on real problems with real data. In such an interlocking culture, companies identify and aggressively recruit new talent before they become free agents on the job market. Faculty members forge collaborations with their industry counterparts to develop new research agendas. And, most importantly, all parties widen their perspectives by taking on specialized tasks with teammates who bring to the projects a diverse array of skills and talents.
These types of partnerships already shape the educational landscape at Chapman. Students in computer science and data analytics are working with data scientists at CoreLogic on a series of challenges, exploring machine learning with large volumes of real estate data. Meanwhile, students in the Machine Learning and Assistive Technology (MLAT) Lab have teamed with Experian Consumer Services to apply predictive analytics to market analysis and credit scoring. In turn, Experian is exploring MLAT’s research in autism spectrum disorder, helping to develop state-of-the-art methods for behavioral interventions. These companies are hiring Chapman students based on their collaborations. And this is only the beginning. Chapman’s development over the past three decades has been nothing short of astounding. Our campus and community have grown in ways that many of us would not have thought possible 10 years ago. While change, especially rapid change, often requires us to act outside of our comfort zone, it also brings
additional avenues to showcase the amazing university we know Chapman to be. As we push our boundaries further with the Fowler School of Engineering, we reaffirm our commitment to the things we already do well, even as we embrace new opportunities and the change that will come with them. We’re building something special here at Chapman, blending calculation with creativity, experiential learning with industry partnerships, grand challenges with a growing culture of achievement. Oh, and lest we forget, we’ve seasoned the mix with just the right amount of vroom, vroom.
Erik Linstead ‘01, Ph.D., and Andrew Lyon, Ph.D., are spearheading efforts to launch the Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University. Lyon is dean of the Schmid College of Science and Technology, where he performs award-winning research on polymeric assemblies for use in regenerative medicine. Linstead is director of undergraduate computing programs and previously was a software engineer for the Boeing Company. If he couldn’t be a computer scientist, Linstead would want to be a Porsche mechanic. W I N T E R 2 018
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AS CHAPMAN PREPARES TO LAUNCH THE FOWLER SCHOOL, MEET SOME ENGINEERING LEADERS WHO ARE ALREADY MAKING A DIFFERENCE.
A Champion of Achievement By Robyn Norwood Louis Ehwerhemuepha (M.S. ’13, Ph.D. ’15)
‘Our Job Is to Save Lives’ By Dennis Arp The challenges of ailing children live in the medical datasets Louis Ehwerhemuepha scours every day. It’s his job to find and nurture the hope. As data scientist for CHOC Children’s hospital, Ehwerhemuepha (M.S. ’13, Ph.D. ’15) discovers clues to why the health of some patients deteriorated. Then he and his colleagues develop predictive tools to help protect those at risk of similar decline. “The opportunity to improve the care of children is at the heart of everything we do,” says Ehwerhemuepha, one of the first graduates of Chapman University’s Ph.D. program in computational and data sciences. “Whether we’re on the floor providing care or working with the data, our job is to save lives.” Advances in care are built on collaboration across all roles at CHOC, Ehwerhemuepha says. “You don’t just run statistical data and get great discoveries,” adds William Feaster, M.D., chief health information officer for CHOC. “We take the knowledge of patient care and marry it with data science. That marriage is what’s important.” Teamwork inspires Ehwerhemuepha, a native of Nigeria who was an Allergan scholar at Chapman. During his graduate studies, he began working with Dr. Anthony Chang as the CHOC cardiologist advanced his own knowledge of data science. Ehwerhemuepha even tutored Feaster and three other physicians, helping them pass their board exams in clinical informatics. “During my 36 years of practice, (data science) is not something I had an opportunity to participate in until we met Louis and began to see the power of it,” Feaster says. In the past year alone, Ehwerhemuepha and Feaster have collaborated on four papers for medical and academic journals. In addition, Ehwerhemuepha meets weekly with Chapman Professor Cyril Rakovski, Ph.D., working on innovations in both the theoretical and applied sides of data science. “Even as a student, he presented in front of big international conferences, and that impressed me,” Rakovski says of Ehwerhemuepha. “His work strengthens our connection to CHOC. He’s a great asset for both institutions.” 10 C H A P M A N N O W
Rene German ’05
Approaching hesitantly, some of the Hispanic students in computer science instructor Rene German’s data structures class had questions for him: “Are you Hispanic? Do you speak Spanish?” “And I said, ‘Yes, I do,’” German recalls. “Then once we got the ball rolling, they said, ‘Where did you go to school?’ I said, ‘Saddleback High School in Santa Ana.’ And then they said, ‘What? So did I!’ and ‘So did I!’ “I said, ‘See, it’s possible.’” German’s path from Saddleback High to Santa Ana College to an undergraduate degree in computer science at Chapman in 2005 led to a series of jobs, including senior software engineer at CoreLogic, before he returned to Chapman as a full-time instructor in 2015 after completing a master’s in computational science from the University. That example makes him a beacon for students from his neighborhood and beyond. German’s father arrived from Mexico as a teenager and has worked on large machinery for the same company for close to 30 years. “My dad said, ‘You need to go to school, son,’” German says. “He said, ‘Look, if you go to school, you’re still going to work hard, but in a different way than I do.’” German played football at Santa Ana College and at Chapman, where he earned a Provost’s Scholarship, among other grants, including a scholarship from the company where his father works. He played on an offensive line that nicknamed itself “The Big Uglies,” and he still proudly wears a 2004 Chapman football T-shirt around campus. “The trajectory Chapman is on, I’ve seen it scale exponentially since I started here,” German says. “The Fowler School of Engineering is exciting, and a lot of great things are happening. I feel like I’m kind of paying it forward. Chapman has opened so many doors for me, I get goosebumps talking about it,” he says, and points to his arm. “Look, I’m not lying.”
Beyond the Google Gauntlet By Robyn Norwood
Dialed in to Solutions
Reagan Williams ’06
By Dennis Arp
When Reagan Williams was 12, he didn’t have the music-on-themove luxury of Spotify or MP3 players. So he did what any other overachieving 12-year-old would do. He built his own FM radio station. No, really, he did. And suddenly he and his friends in rural Nuevo, Calif., could listen to Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Foo Fighters as they traversed every corner of their unincorporated community. To this day, at the intersection of ambition and audacity, you’ll find Reagan Williams ’06. Now the head of solution engineering for Google, Williams works with many of the most innovative companies in the world, developing products that help them get the greatest impact from their Google advertising dollars. “We do a pretty decent job of capturing revenue, and on the outside it may seem like it’s seamless, but we have some really interesting engineering problems to solve,” Williams says. His teams deal with hundreds of billions of data points, “if not trillions,” he notes. Keeping up with the pace of the work has never been a problem because Williams is at home in Silicon Valley’s culture of achievement. “We’re working on problems that affect billions of people,” he says. “The magnitude of that impact is not lost on me.” The son of an industrial engineer, Williams accelerated his own expectations as a sophomore at Chapman when he landed in Professor Erik Linstead’s data structures class. Linstead, Ph.D., was fresh from his graduate studies at Stanford, where some of his classmates assumed that his Chapman undergrad experience wasn’t as rigorous as theirs. “Erik knew the perception was wrong, so he probably overcorrected in his teaching,” Williams recalls. “He said, ‘Starting today, I’m going to give you my master’s level experience,’ and he never relented on that. It teed me up for a different kind of pace. That class was fantastic. I probably eked out a B, and it definitely took a lot of growth to get it. That experience set me up for the rest of my classes. “Why take a class unless it pushes you outside your comfort zone?” Williams went on to get a master’s in computer science from Harvard, which he still serves as an advisor to the program’s teaching assistants. In that role, as in his work at Google, he troubleshoots a wide range of problems. But the solutions probably aren’t any more satisfying than when he worked with his dad to develop an FM transmitter because he found the other mobile-music technologies of the time totally inadequate. “We were definitely not up to FCC code,” Williams says of his station. “I hope we’re beyond the statute of limitations.”
At home with newborn twins and fresh out of work after her job with a mobile-app startup ended, Lindsey Hughes ’10 (M.S. ’13) decided to crack a book. Her selection was Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions by Gayle Laakmann McDowell, a software engineer with experience at Google, Microsoft and Apple. Hughes, a former adjunct instructor in computer science at Chapman University, has succeeded in a field where she is sometimes the only woman in the room. Amazon and Boeing already were on her resume, but there was a key door that hadn’t opened. “I’d been trying to get into Google for a while,” she says. “This time around, I was on maternity leave and decided to go all out and really study for a month straight.” Interviewing for a software engineering job is a lot more than a getting-to-know-you visit: It’s a gauntlet. At Google, it’s a gauntlet squared, and plenty of employees didn’t make it on their first try. “For most of the big companies, it’s a full day; you interview with maybe five different people and each interview is about an hour,” Hughes says. “You’re usually whiteboarding problems, and a lot of times each person is testing you on different things.” Companies are looking for knowledge of data structures and algorithms, programming languages and, of course, coding skills and problem-solving ability under pressure. Hughes made the cut. She started in December at the Irvine offices of Google, where women hold only 20 percent of technical jobs. “It’s growing, for sure,” Hughes says. And her precise duties? That would be a Google secret. “It’s an internal project,” is all she can say. Lindsey Hughes ’10 (M.S. ’13)
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Unearthing the Answers By Dennis Arp Trained as an environmental scientist, Brian Reinsch ’06 is also drawn to engineering by “the logic component,” he says. “You dig deep into the curiosity, then apply logic as you seek out the right answer.” In his current work, it’s the “digging deep” part that initiates Reinsch’s investigations. His work takes him into California’s largest open-pit mine, which produces nearly half the world’s supply of borates for use in hundreds of products, including a classic: 20 Mule Team Borax. Reinsch runs quality tests to ensure that the mine and its labs near Death Valley operate at their full potential. Much of the chemistry he uses still connects him to the geochemistry lab of Chapman University Professor Christopher Kim, Ph.D. “Dr. Kim introduced me to professional, cuttingedge research,” says Reinsch, who went on to earn master’s and Ph.D. degrees in environmental science and management from Carnegie Mellon University. Mixed in was a post-doc fellowship at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, which included studying the environmental effects of uranium mining in Kazakhstan. He had planned to become a professor himself, but as he developed industry colleagues he decided “to give this business thing a try,” says Reinsch, who works for the international company Rio Tinto. “I’m sure glad I also had business classes at Chapman.” At the mine in Boron, he runs daily tests “to ensure our products are what our customers want.” When he finds impurities, he often has to trace them to their source and then engineer a solution. “You follow it through to find out why something is happening at the fundamental level,” Reinsch says. “That’s applicable to all facets of life.” Call it the bedrock of Reinsch’s approach. “Hunt down the problem,” he says, “and learn how to fix it.”
At the Cutting Edge of Care By Dennis Arp How do you know when you’ve found your calling in life? For Katie Lamkin ’16, unmistakable signs flashed early in her Chapman University experience. “After I took Computer Science 101, I couldn’t stop writing code and I couldn’t stop working on side projects like mobile apps,” she says. “I was scraping the Web for anything Katie Lamkin ’16 under the sun that would allow me to learn more about computer science and engineering.” These days, Lamkin is still finding insights as a software engineer for Human Longevity Inc., a San Diego-based genomics health intelligence company that gives patients the tools to map longer, healthier lives. “They can customize health care to their bodies,” Lamkin says of clients. Hers is a working life at the cutting edge of preventive care. “Other (companies) focus on the parts (of genomics) we know the most about today,” she says. “We believe in the bigger picture.” The industry is a great fit for Lamkin, given that her mom is a physician and that science and math have always been her favorite subjects. Plus, “I always thought I had an engineering mind,” she says. That mindset means she enjoys staring down problems “with a zillion options for solutions,” she explains. The thrill is in finding her way to robust and scalable results. “At Chapman, every single class helped with those troubleshooting skills,” Lamkin says. But one class stood out: Human Computer Interaction with Professor Erik Linstead, Ph.D., who challenged students to develop tools that would improve the lives of children with autism. Lamkin and her classmates created a computer game built on play with virtual blocks. Who knew it could be so much fun to hone fine motor skills? For Lamkin, it’s also a joy watching Chapman prepare to launch the Fowler School of Engineering. “I can’t wait to essentially poach the students and work with them in the future,” she says.
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Brian Reinsch ’06
President’s Cabinet member Joe Kiani champions new technology to reduce medical errors.
ENGINEERING PLACED JOE KIANI ON A PATH TO FULFILLING REWARDS, AND NOW HE’S WORKING TO SEE THAT THOSE OPPORTUNITIES GROW. By Robyn Norwood oe Kiani spoke only a few words of English when he arrived in the United States from Iran at the age of 9. Five words, to be precise. “Yes, no and I don’t know,” Kiani says with a laugh. Now, as chairman and CEO of Masimo, the Irvine-based tech company he founded, Kiani is building on his transformational advances in pulse oximetry, which monitors the oxygen saturation of a patient’s blood without breaking the skin of a fingertip. He was educated as an electrical engineer and is a zealous proponent of new technology to reduce medical errors and hasten the end of preventable hospital deaths. “I really think, given the limited time we have here, we have got to do things that make our world better,” says Kiani,
a member of the Chapman University President’s Cabinet. “Art does that, and I’m not opposed to the things that art brings for the imagination. I do believe there’s a huge need to improve our healthcare system through technology and education. I hope engineers and people who enjoy programming will go help improve lives and save lives, not only for the income potential, but to make our world better.” Kiani founded the Patient Safety Movement Foundation, and he has amassed a lengthy list of U.S. patents after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from San Diego State University by age 22. He graduated from high school at 15. “I think the key to mobility in our country is education, unlike many other countries where it’s a who-you-know
system and a where-you-came-from system. That is not the country we have here,” he says. “The problem is many people stuck in poverty lack someone in their lives to show them the vision of education, of what it means for the future.” Kiani’s inspirations were his parents – his father was an electrical engineer and his mother a nurse – but despite their education they had to start over when they immigrated to America, settling in Alabama and later California. “We lived in poor conditions and for a while we lived in the projects,” Kiani says. “It was not an easy life, but one thing my parents always understood and we had a clear vision of was that education would be the ticket to a good life, a fulfilled life.”
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Chapman pharmacy researchers are pioneering microscopic therapies with global potential.
Photo by Dennis Arp
Professor Keykavous Parang, Ph.D., holds models of the tiny peptides he’s developing for targeted release of anticancer drugs.
By Dawn Bonker t’s one thing to create new drugs. It’s another to scoot them toward their targets in the corners of the human body where tumors, infections and cancer cells set up shop. Enter the biomedical engineers – scientists skilled in building microscopic solutions to some of medicine’s biggest problems. In the labs of the Chapman University School of Pharmacy (CUSP), several researchers at the Center for Targeted Drug Delivery are exploring this promising world. They aim to make drugs land where needed, from infected bones to cancerous tumors, and reduce the amount of side effects that chemotherapy and powerful antibiotics wreak elsewhere in the body. “Many people think engineering is only devices and instruments,” says Keykavous Parang, Ph.D., professor and associate dean of research, graduate 14 C H A P M A N N O W
studies and global affairs at CUSP. “But actually a lot of us are doing molecular and nanomaterial engineering.” Still, they do what any engineer does – build something new to solve a human problem. Except for this added challenge – these micro inventions have to function inside people. Stealth and disguise are often the techniques of choice. For Parang, that means creating peptides that can hold anticancer drugs and survive in the human body, but unravel when they encounter cancer cells’ acidic environment. So when they arrive at a tumor, they release the drug on target, improving its efficacy while reducing side effects elsewhere. A 3D model of one such molecular creation sits on his desk. “It’s a building block of peptide nanomaterial,” he says, pointing to the plastic model, which looks
a bit like a cluster of noodles holding hands. “A small delivery device.” Over in the lab of Vuk Uskokovic, Ph.D., the challenge is on to plan the demise as well as the success of an injectable paste. The material Uskokovic is hoping to develop could have potential applications for cancer and bone infection therapies. Typically, physicians treat bone infections with large doses of antibiotics and sometimes surgery. But the process could be improved by strategically delivering antibiotics to an infected site, rather than dispersing it into the bloodstream, the assistant professor says. The paste Uskokovic is working with contains molecular material that bonds with antibiotics. Injected where it’s needed, it would remain there to deliver its infection-fighting payload thanks to its self-setting properties. Once healthy, bone has good potential for regeneration, and the cementlike paste could even be a temporary structure to aid that function, he says. Temporary being a particularly tricky part. “That paradigm of constructive deconstruction. That is not something we see in any other field of engineering,” Uskokovic says. Similarly, Hamidreza Montazeri Aliabadi, Ph.D., is working to craft nanoparticles that can taxi anticancer drugs directly into cancer cells, where they can best stop the cells from synthesizing protein, the engine of growth for all cell development. Currently, the assistant professor is focused on oily lipid-based carriers, generally called stable nucleic acid lipid particles (SNALPs). The specific structure he’s working on would surround the oily carriers with water-friendly peptides, tricking the body and the destination tumor into thinking the anticancer drugs headed their way were harmless water particles. “They tend to penetrate cell membranes very easily,” he says of the carriers. “They’re like shooting a needle through a balloon.”
ever doubt the life-changing powers of a gifted science teacher. Sometimes she can even transform the thinking of a jaded eighth-grader. Aaron Grisez ’19 was that disaffected middleschooler. He thought Ms. Herrington’s bubble station and her other immersive science experiences were super cheesy – until her enthusiasm and expertise won him over. “I had so much fun in her class, and that stuck with me,” Grisez recalls. “I wanted to get back to that. Undoubtedly that was the start of my unending interest in science.” Now that transformative power is in Grisez’s hands. As an undergraduate at Chapman University, he is engineering a mobile app that marries his two academic passions – music composition and quantum physics – to make learning less intimidating and more fun. The next step in his project is entrepreneurial: pitching his app, called Qhord, to investors and then sending it out into the marketplace. The project started in fall 2016, springing from conversations Grisez had with his Chapman physics advisor, Justin Dressel, Ph.D. “We talked several times about how quantum mechanics seems to be this esoteric thing – maybe even mystical, in some weird way,” Dressel says. “And yet with the rise of quantum computing, there’s a growing demand in the workforce for people who understand it at least at a fundamental level.” Over time, ideas proposed by Grisez and explored on a whiteboard morphed into a mobile app that features an instrument for composing music – sort of a piano built on quantum concepts. The language of music comes naturally to Grisez, who started playing the piano at age 5 and whose brother now performs with the New World Symphony in Miami. Grisez saw parallels in the vocabularies of music and quantum physics. “A melody is very much like a quantum trajectory,” he says. “It can go up and down, and what happened in the past of a melody can affect what will happen next.” With Qhord, players weave through puzzles and challenges as they explore the quantum keyboard. “As you demonstrate a mastery over concepts,” Grisez says, “you start getting a larger palette for your exploration.” Like Grisez’s own eighth-grade science experience, an initial spark leads to a deeper dive and a growing level of understanding.
A double major in physics and music composition, Aaron Grisez ’19 founded a startup called Qhord to advance understanding of quantum mechanics. “The thing I really want to get good at,” he says, “is creating things that never existed before.”
The magic of music helps Aaron Grisez ’19 demystify physics and foster science literacy for the future. By Dennis Arp “The most exciting thing to me is that it really hits the area of most need – public outreach and understanding of concepts while still being fun,” Dressel says. For Grisez, Qhord is providing immersive experiences that fast-track his own growth in a range of pursuits – as a music composition and physics double major, as a teacher and investigator, and as the CEO of a startup. He and Qhord colleagues Michael Seaman ’19 and Ethan McDaniel are now refining their project through Chapman’s Launch Labs business incubator program. At the same time, Grisez has been preparing to present at the Southwest Quantum Information and Technology workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., and at the American Physical Society March meeting in Los Angeles. “It’s rare for an undergrad to have the
self-confidence to say that he wants to give a 10-minute talk at the largest conference for physicists in the world,” Dressel says. “But then Aaron’s combination of fearlessness and flexibility is unusual.” That flexibility comes in handy when Grisez hits a hurdle, like when he was working through bugs in the Qhord interface and inadvertently destroyed his own Android phone “purely because I got the icon size wrong,” he says. It’s in such moments of problem-solving that he feels most like a working engineer. “I consider myself an engineer of my own field,” he says. “I’m a quantum musical engineer. By that I mean that the thing I’m most passionate about – the thing I really want to get good at – is creating things that never existed before. I think that’s something I share with all engineers.” W I N T E R 2 018
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COMMENCEMENT May 18–20 chapman.edu/commencement
ALUMNI BOTTOMLESS MIMOSA BRUNCH Hosted by Greek Alumni
6TH ANNUAL ALUMNI ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY MIXER Mix and mingle with alumni from all facets of the entertainment industry at Chapman’s largest networking event of the year. April 12 Lionsgate Entertainment in Santa Monica TICKETS: chapman.edu/aeimixer
After brunch in the Athenaeum, guests have the option to head to Memorial Hall for an afternoon of the best Greek performances of the year. April 28 TICKETS:
bit.ly/alumnibrunchtickets
THE CHAPMAN FAMILY HOMECOMING CELEBRATION SAVE THE DATE:
Oct. 11–13
DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARDS SAVE THE DATE:
Oct. 12 chapman.edu/alumniawards