Fall 2010 | Columbia Engineering Magazine by Columbia Engineering School

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Columbia EnginEEring

Columbia University in the City of New York The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science

the fu foundation school of engineering and applied science

impact on SuStainability

impaCt on SuStainability

Water impact on SuStainability

CLIMATE impact on SuStainability

EnErgy

Armen Avanessians

Giving Back: Armen Avanessians MS ’83 IEOR

The Family of Samuel Y. Sheng comments, suggestions, or address changes may be mailed to: columbia university the fu foundation school of engineering and applied science room 510, Mc 4714 500 West 120th street new York, nY 10027 phone: 212-854-2993 fax: 212-864-0104 e-mail: mk321@columbia.edu

dean of the school feniosky peña-Mora editor: Margaret r. Kelly contributing Writers: Jeff Ballinger, timothy cross, holly evarts, Ken Kostel, peggy Maher, elaine ragland design and art direction: university publications photography: eileen Barroso, columbia university photography

read more about columbia engineering http://www.engineering.columbia.edu

Columbia Engineering is published twice a year by: columbia university in the city of new York the fu foundation school of engineering and applied science 500 West 120th street, Mc 4714 new York, nY 10027

MA ’51 Chemical Engineering

Samuel Y. Sheng

University Trustee Armen Avanessians ’83, chair of the Columbia Campaign for Engineering and longtime donor to the University, has played an integral part in the School’s growth over the past decade. Last year, he created a fund to provide a 1:1 match for major gifts to support endowed chairs and professorships in engineering. By aiming to interest other alumni in supporting engineering faculty, Mr. Avanessians and his family have greatly amplified the awareness of Columbia Engineering faculty as the heart of this world-class engineering school. In his own words, Mr. Avanessians sees himself “helping Columbia Engineering take a significant step forward to fulfill its potential as one of the world’s leading engineering institutions.” In response to the Avanessians matching grant, the family of Samuel Y. Sheng ’51 stepped forward to honor their father by establishing a professorship in his memory. Mr. Sheng, a graduate of the master’s program in the Department of Chemical Engineering, enjoyed a long and successful career in real estate development. Throughout his career, he was heavily involved in philanthropy, generously supporting ophthalmology research and undergraduate financial aid at Columbia. A scholarship in his honor was established in 2007 to provide critical financial support for talented students who would otherwise be unable to pursue a Columbia Engineering degree. To honor both his memory and his commitment to the School, Mr. Sheng’s daughter Jean, his son Kent, and his daughter-in-law Lauren ’76 established the Samuel Y. Sheng Professorship, matching their families’ support with funds drawn from the Avanessians match. The Samuel Y. Sheng Chair will support Columbia Engineering faculty pursuing research in the fast-developing field of biomedical engineering. “We wanted to honor Sam in a meaningful way, while supporting an institution that has had such a significant impact in all our lives. Armen’s generous match has made this joint effort even more rewarding,” says Lauren Wong Sheng, a member of the School’s Board of Visitors. In honoring their respective parents, the Avanessians and Sheng families have come together to ensure the future of the School. Their mutual passion for academic excellence and exceptional faculty leadership will leave a lasting legacy at the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

contents Fall 2010 | Volume 52, No. 1

IMPACT ON SUSTAINABILITY 3

Letter from the Dean

Fostering New Ways to “Green”: Ponisseril Somasundaran

Understanding Brown Carbon: V. Faye McNeill

Making Concrete “Green”: Christian Meyer

Reevaluating the Hole in the Ozone: Lorenzo Polvani

Raising the Roof: Huiming Yin

Studying Earth’s Mantle and Crust: Marc Spiegelman

Greening Infrastructure: Patricia Culligan

Creating Artificial Trees: Klaus Lackner

Repairing the Microbial Nitrogen Cycle: Kartik Chandran

Characterizing Nanoparticles for Fuel Cells: Simon Billinge

Recycling Carbon Dioxide for Energy: Marco Castaldi

Peer Networking to Save Energy: John Taylor

Keeping Wind Turbines Turning: Elon J. Terrell

Solving the Global Water Crisis: Upmanu Lall

Producing Organic Photovoltaics: John Kymissis

Using Nanomaterials for Solar Cells: Tony Heinz

Storing Energy More Efficiently: Sanat Kumar

Making a Smarter Power Grid: Roger Anderson

Engineering in the Developing World: Vijay Modi

Sustaining the Environment: Peter Schlosser

Predicting El Niño: Mark Cane

Looking at Light: Richard Osgood

Modeling Monsoons: Adam Sobel

Harvesting Energy via Nanomechanics: Xi Chen

Capturing Carbon: Ah-Hyung (Alissa) Park

Predicting Failure in Ice Shelves: Haim Waisman

Understanding Extremes of Global Warming: Tuncel Yegulalp

New Global Reach for Sustainable Community Projects

SEAS by the Numbers

A New Goal: 150 by 150

Columbia Engineering Around the World

Commencement and Class Day

Welcoming New Students and Faculty

Alumni Notes

Program Notes: Graduate Alumni

In Memoriam

Ivy Engineering Deans Meet

IBC

Giving Back: Armen Avanessians ’83; Samuel Y. Sheng ’51

Columbia Engineering online at: engineering.columbia.edu

Photo courtesy of naSa

ustainability is sometimes defined as the capacity to endure. In our last issue that featured faculty research, we concentrated on the many ways that our professors are working in the field of health to help the human body endure. This issue features many of our faculty who are working to help the planet endure. Their efforts span the areas that are of concern to all—water, climate, and energy. One of our alumni, Mike Massimino ’84, has had the opportunity to view Earth from a unique perspective. As a NASA astronaut, and the first person to Twitter from outer space, he has shared his observations with the world: “viewing the Earth is a study of contrasts, beautiful colors of the planet, thin blue line of atmosphere, pure blackness of space.” Earth is truly beautiful when viewed from space, and we know that its health and its future are in our hands. Our School’s history is inextricably linked to our planet. Indeed, we were founded in 1864 as the Columbia School of Mines. In the early years of our School, we, like others at that time, were more concerned about what the planet could yield for us—precious gems, minerals, and fossil fuels. But even before the current emphasis on the importance of sustainability in all its forms, the School’s first dean realized that, for humans to endure, the resources upon which their lives depended also needed to be of a quality that would support life. Charles Frederick Chandler worked to bring clean water into New York City and instituted measures to keep the water supply potable. In 1866, Chandler was approached by the Metropolitan Board of Health to investigate sanitary concerns that impacted the health of New York City. He continued his work for the Board of Health, becoming its first chemist, and, in 1873, he was appointed its president. In this capacity, he provided laws that protected both the health of New Yorkers and the health of the environment in which they lived, promoting laws and regulations that would curb the discharge of toxic gases and acids into sludge.

“From orbit: Viewing the Earth is a study of contrasts, beautiful colors of the planet, thin blue line of atmosphere, pure blackness of space” —NASA Astronaut Michael J. Massimino ’84, in a Tweet May 19, 2009

During the entire time he was monitoring the health and environment of New Yorkers, Chandler was making his mark as dean of the Columbia School of Mines, creating and leading a distinguished faculty from the School’s inception to 1897. Over the years, the School has been a leader in mining and metallurgy research and education, including pioneering work in mineral beneficiation, chemical thermodynamics, kinetics, and transport phenomena in mineral extraction and processing. Today we recognize our obligation to help our planet endure, and that obligation has become part of the mission of the School as we seek to educate socially responsible engineering and applied science leaders whose work results in the betterment of the human condition, locally, nationally, and globally. In the late 1990s, the School’s traditional programs in mining and mineral engineering were transformed to include environmental concerns for land and water resources. The Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering resulted and, as such, its faculty became an integral part of the new University-wide major initiative in Earth studies, the Columbia Earth Institute. Today, faculty in many different departments are tackling sustainability as a research focus, each working in his or her specialized area to help solve some of the most intractable problems that face our world today. I hope you will enjoy reading about them and their research, and are proud of the great impact that Columbia Engineering is making on the lives of many people around the world today.

Feniosky Peña-Mora Dean and Morris A. and Alma Schapiro Professor

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understanding brown carbon V. FayE mcnEill chEmical EnginEEring

as an undergraduate at the california institute of technology, Faye mcneill gravitated to studying the chemistry of the atmosphere for a very personal reason. “the air pollution there was bad,” said mcneill, assistant professor of chemical engineering, of the air in southern california. “i have asthma, so i’m always a little more aware of atmospheric composition just because of the way i feel.” McNeill is particularly interested in how aerosols, small particles or droplets of liquid suspended in the atmosphere, affect global climate. Because they are so small (typically 2 to 10,000 nm), gravity has little effect on aerosol particles and they can remain airborne for several days in the lower atmosphere, longer in the stratosphere. Aerosols such as the sulfur compounds and ash emitted by Mt. Pinatubo pushed down global average temperatures for two to three years after it erupted in 1991. Other aerosols can absorb incoming solar radiation or long-wave radiation reflected from Earth’s surface, resulting in a warming effect on climate. The range of direct and indirect, compounding and conflicting effects makes aerosols one of the biggest unsolved problems facing climate scientists. Aerosols also can have a wide range of chemical compositions, which reflects their diverse origins. McNeill and her team have recently focused on understanding the sources and properties of lightabsorbing organic material, or “brown carbon,” in atmospheric aerosols. Brown carbon is often a byproduct of the burning of biomass, but its exact formation mechanism is poorly understood. It turns out that, rather than just being emitted directly from a source such as a brush fire, brown carbon can form through complex reactions in airborne atmospheric particles.

Brown carbon also interacts very differently with the atmosphere and environment than its inorganic cousin black carbon, and its roles in atmospheric chemistry and climate are just beginning to be understood. For one thing, black carbon tends to absorb radiation across the visible spectrum, but brown carbon preferentially absorbs shorter wavelengths of light and thus can influence the formation of ground-level ozone—the “bad” kind that leads to McNeill’s asthma attacks. To fill in our understanding of these important atmospheric compounds, McNeill is examining the basic chemistry and physics behind the cloudforming and light-absorbing characteristics of organic aerosols in the lab. She also works with other groups to integrate their piece of the climate puzzle into the big picture, including climate modelers who write the massive, computer-based simulations that attempt to predict how individual parts of the environment interact to govern Earth’s climate. “A big part of what we do is communicate the results of our work to modelers,” said McNeill. “The fundamental information we get in the lab will eventually find its way into better climate models.” And that is something that can help us all breathe a little easier.

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reevaluating the hole in the ozone lorEnzo polVani appliEd physics and appliEd mathEmatics

e don’t hear much about the hole in Earth’s ozone layer these days, and for good reason. Collective international action has been successful in reversing a decadeslong deterioration of the protective layer in the stratosphere. The hole, which grows and shrinks seasonally over Antarctica, is expected to close by sometime midcentury. Now, however, models and observations of Earth’s atmosphere are showing that the ozone hole may be having an effect on global climate patterns that may be masking the full impact of global warming. “The ozone hole has been ignored for the past decade as a solved problem,” said Lorenzo Polvani. “But we’re finding it has caused a great deal of the climate change that’s been observed.” Polvani, who holds appointments in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics as well as the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, has studied atmospheric dynamics from the surface to the upper stratosphere and from both

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poles to the equator. In the last few years, he has focused on understanding the effects that ozone depletion, and its eventual recovery, has on Earth’s climate. Ozone—a molecule made up of three atoms of oxygen—absorbs much of the sun’s UVB radiation. In the mid-1980s, it was discovered that chlorofluorocarbons, a chemical used as aerosol propellants, were collecting in the stratosphere over Antarctica, where they were very quickly breaking down the planet’s ozone. In 1987, world governments signed the Montreal Protocol to ban the manufacture and use of chlorofluorocarbons, and the success of the agreement has been held up as a model for an eventual international climate treaty. Ozone warms the stratosphere when it absorbs UV radiation. Its relative absence over Antarctica for the past 40 years has had a cooling effect on the upper atmosphere over the South Pole that is as much as ten times as strong as the warming effect associated with increasing carbon dioxide concentrations.

The effects of this cooling already appear to be affecting the location of the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitude jet stream. Like its twin in the north, the southern jet stream is associated with the formation and movement of weather patterns around the globe. Cooling of the upper troposphere—the highest part of the lower atmosphere—has been connected to a shift of the southern mid-latitude jet stream toward the south by a few degrees. This shift has resulted in precipitation patterns moving south as well, and in the tropical dry zones expanding. The evidence is not yet conclusive, but Australia’s lengthy drought may be the result of this rearrangement of Southern Hemisphere weather patterns. If so, Polvani’s next task is to find out what will happen as the ozone hole closes and the full brunt of global warming is felt throughout the atmosphere. “These next couple of decades are going to be interesting times,” said Polvani. “We’re going to see these climate changes play out in our lifetimes.”

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studying Earth’s mantle and crust marc spiEgElman appliEd physics and appliEd mathEmatics

rowing up, Marc Spiegelman dreamed of one day being the next Jacques Cousteau. The only problem was he enjoyed hiking more than diving and he excelled at math and physics rather than oceanography. Two summers spent working as a ranger for the U.S. Forest Service and the discovery that the planet often reveals its secret inner workings through calculus sealed his future. Today, Spiegelman studies the interior of the planet using the tools of a computational physicist—computer models and equations describing fluids and solids deforming far beyond human eyes and time scales. In combining his love of dry land with his interest in physics and math, Spiegelman treats the planet as one, big physics problem and, at the same time, is helping advance understanding of how Earth’s crust and mantle behave in tectonically active regions of the world—places dominated by volcanoes and earthquakes. More recently, he has begun considering a problem that has traditionally attracted scientists with a more airy focus: what to

do with all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Spiegelman’s principal expertise involves applying theories that describe the migration of magma and fluids in the solid earth, and the behavior of solid materials under the immense heat and stress of the deep earth. His efforts are helping create a more general understanding of the interactions between solids and fluids in the mantle and crust. This work has applications to understanding the behavior and output of volcanoes around the globe like Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano in Iceland that erupted in early 2010 and shut down air travel over much of Europe for nearly one month. His work also provides insights into such problems such as the interactions between reactive fluids and a variety of minerals found in the earth. His expertise is attracting attention from new circles because it turns out that one of the more promising ideas for dealing with excess carbon emissions involves the solid earth. Geological carbon seques-

tration, a problem that Spiegelman’s colleagues at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory are actively investigating, entails injecting carbon dioxide into certain mineral formations found in many places around the world. Spiegelman’s ability to work between the worlds of observation and modeling may one day prove crucial in understanding what happens when carbon dioxide under immense pressure reacts with mineral formations containing magnesium. Such reactions produce extreme heat, which cracks the rock, and form solid magnesium carbonate, locking the carbon dioxide away safely and permanently. It is this ability to model unobservable interactions between solids, fluids, and heat deep underground that gives him a leg up on his old hero, Jacques Cousteau. Instead of a view into the depths of the ocean, Spiegelman has been able to see through his equations and models into deepest recesses of the upper earth.

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creating artificial trees Klaus lacKner earth and environmental engineering

there are people who think outside the box. then there are people like Klaus lackner who throw the box away entirely when they think. While others argue over new ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, lackner has methods that will, as he puts it, “close the carbon loop” altogether. “Stabilizing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air requires reducing carbon dioxide emissions to nearly zero,” lackner said in testimony before the House Science and Technology Subcommittee on energy and environment recently. “Think of pouring water into a cup: as long as you pour water into the cup, the water level in the cup goes up. it does not matter whether the maximum level is one inch below the rim or one and a half inches below the rim. in either case, you will eventually have to stop pouring.” That sort of big-picture thinking is nothing new for the ewing and J. lamar Worzel Professor of geophysics in the Department of earth and environmental engineering. His efforts to find systemscale solutions to humanity’s demand for energy set the stage for lackner’s seminal conclusion in 1999 that, to truly control carbon emissions, we would have to learn how to remove carbon dioxide directly from the air. The wind, he calculated, is vastly more efficient at transporting carbon dioxide to a collection device than it is as a means of generating electricity. now lackner has taken his ideas one step further and is working with global research Technologies to create artificial trees that will pull carbon dioxide from the air, just as real trees do. His air capture

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machines are like giant filters that trap the carbon dioxide that will be later freed and converted into a liquid: syngas, synthetic gas that can be used as a fuelstock. alternatively, it could be disposed of through geologic and mineral sequestration. our reliance on liquid hydrocarbon fuels for transportation has led lackner to search for affordable low-carbon production methods. in a nod to his work contemplating an auxon army, he and his colleagues at the lenfest center for Sustainable energy are looking for ways to apply the benefits of mass production to energy and fuels to drive down costs. in addition, he is taking a serious look at solar power as a way to eliminate carbon emissions from fuel production entirely and bring us closer to achieving a carbon-neutral society rather than simply dealing with the effects of climate change as they occur by doing such things as blocking a portion of the sun’s radiation. “imagine if we decided to solve our garbage problem by putting houses on stilts and raising them a little every year,” said lackner. “That’s what a lot of geoengineering amounts to, and that’s not a solution to the problem. a real solution will only come by completely rethinking the way we use carbon.”

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repairing the microbial nitrogen cycle KartiK chandran Earth and EnVironmEntal EnginEEring

ot everyone can lay claim to having helped found a new field of study or to having a unit of measurement named after them. Kartik Chandran can, but he tends not to. He is too busy studying the influence of nitrogen on global climate and the biosphere.

Ideally, household and industrial wastewater is treated to convert nitrogen-containing compounds to N2. However, the EPA estimates that improper treatment methods lead to the accidental release of 24,000 tons of nitrous oxide in the U.S. alone each year.

As N2, nitrogen is a largely nonreactive, but crucial, part of Earth’s atmosphere. As nitrous oxide (N2O), it is one of the strongest greenhouse gases. As nitric oxide (NO), it plays a role in ozone depletion and, at the molecular scale, in promoting resistance to antimicrobial products. Ironically, both can be formed in the process of trying to improve lives and prevent disease by treating wastewater.

Nitric oxide is another byproduct of faulty or improper wastewater treatment. In the atmosphere, it converts to nitrogen dioxide, a major component of ground-level smog. It also has the surprising property of helping microorganisms “learn” to become resistant to the human immune system and, potentially, to antibiotics such as tetracycline.

“We’d ideally like to convert everything to dinitrogen gas,” said Chandran, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. “But if we don’t engineer bioreactors well, we’ll just end up impairing air quality and possibly creating robust microorganisms.”

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The immune system and some antibiotics use nitric oxide to combat pathogens in the human body. To counteract this, many microbes dose themselves with low levels of nitric oxide in an effort to become acclimatized to its effects. By encountering nitric oxide in the environment, pathogens can become immune without having to expend the energy re-

quired to produce the substance themselves. The obvious need for continued treatment of wastewater coupled with increasing concerns over the impacts of improper treatment have led to efforts by Chandran and others to launch the new field of azotomics, which examines the microbial structure and function of the global nitrogen cycle. In addition, Chandran’s work has resulted in a new unit of measure, the Chandran number, which describes the propensity of microbes to produce nitrous oxide. “We are going to be dealing with wastewater treatment and nitrogen pollution for a long time,” said Chandran. “By improving understanding of the molecular mechanisms of the microbial nitrogen pathways and coupling that with new engineering tools, we can tackle these issues in a better fashion than we have been thus far.”

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Recycling carbon Dioxide for Energy maRco castalDi EaRth anD EnViRonmEntal EnginEERing

it seems almost anything can be recycled these days. Soda bottles become clothes, rubber tires end up in paving materials. What if there was another use for all the excess carbon dioxide that gets pumped into the atmosphere? now there is. it can be used to make fuel. marco castaldi, assistant professor of earth and environmental engineering and head of the combustion and catalysis laboratory, focuses his research on understanding the catalytic and noncatalytic reactions that occur when carbon dioxide is introduced into thermal conversion processes such as the gasification of coal. He recently developed and tested a simple method for converting biomass to fuel in which he added carbon dioxide to the process. When he did, he found that he produced significantly more fuel and less waste. Humans currently produce nearly 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, almost all of which ends up in the atmosphere. most mitigation strategies

to combat global warming focus on reducing the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted or, more recently, on ways to remove the gas from the atmosphere. castaldi’s aim is to redirect a portion of those emissions to a useful purpose. Producing energy from biomass is generally done in one of two ways: by burning the material and using the heat to spin a turbine or by extracting the carbon and hydrogen in plant material and using it to produce a hydrocarbon fuel. of the two, the latter is more efficient and much less harmful to the environment. Syngas, or synthesis gas, is produced by heating biomass in a reaction vessel and injecting steam. it can be used as a stand-alone fuel or, as its name implies, to synthesize other chemicals and fuels. The reaction is an energy- and water-intensive process that can also leave behind large amounts of carbon in the form of unprocessed lignin. Five years ago, castaldi began investigating what would happen if he reused some of the carbon di-

oxide generated during syngas production by pumping it back into the reaction chamber. When he did, he discovered that the carbon dioxide reacted with steam to produce more heat. He also found that replacing about 30 percent of the steam with carbon dioxide reduced water usage and converted almost all of the lignin to syngas, leaving behind only a carbonless char. castaldi estimates that if the biomass were used to replace 20 percent of existing demand for transportation fuels, 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide would be kept from the atmosphere. incorporating carbon dioxide into the fuel-making process would increase this to more than 1.8 billion tons—the same as removing 308 million vehicles from the roads. “This is what engineering does best,” said castaldi, “developing processes that can extract value from unwanted materials—to help make the world a better place.”

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Keeping Wind turbines turning Elon J. tErrEll mEchanical EnginEEring

around the world, communities are increasingly utilizing wind power because it is a clean, sustainable source of renewable energy, is fast to deploy, creates jobs, uses very little water, and is economically competitive. in fact, wind power is the fastest-growing source of energy production, having grown from zero production in the early 1980s to more than 120,000 megawatts (enough to power at least 100 million homes) worldwide as of 2008. But as wind turbines are increasingly being installed, their power systems are being challenged by a number of issues, especially exposure to harsh operational and environmental conditions, as well as the effects of contamination from the environment—their gearbox systems, in particular, often prematurely break down. Elon J. Terrell, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, is an expert in tribology, the science of friction, lubrication, and wear within sliding and contacting interfaces. He uses analytical, numerical, and experimental techniques to analyze the interfacial interactions and the wear between sliding surfaces in either dry sliding or lubricated contact. Since friction and wear are challenges for devices that contain moving components, his research interests extend to several industries, including power generation, energy conversion, energy harvesting, MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), and health sciences. One of Terrell’s current projects is focused on the multiphysics analysis of contaminated cyclic rolling-sliding contacts to gain a better physical understanding of the behavior of an interface between two lubricated surfaces that are contaminated with solid particles and involved in cyclical rolling-sliding contact. His primary testbed involves particulate contaminants in a lubricated gearbox system, such

as those used in wind turbines. A vital aspect of his research is the combined modeling of the various physical interactions that take place within this interface, including lubricant fluid flow, particle motion, particle-surface contact, and the resultant abrasive wear experienced by both surfaces. To better understand the lubrication of contaminated geartrains, Terrell’s group is exploring the use of mesh-free particle methods, wherein the lubricant flow, the contacting surfaces, and the particles are all represented by virtual particles that interact with one another and move dynamically with time. These techniques are fairly new, having only been widely used for about 30 years. Although studies have involved the use of these methods for fluid mechanics and solid mechanics, Terrell’s group is seeking to be the first to use them to integrally connect fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, and particle dynamics into a single predictive simulation. His other research interests include the study of crack initiation, propagation, and agglomeration under low-amplitude cyclic loading, work that will help to better explain why the bases of gas turbine blades fail after a given amount of use. Terrell is also exploring the possibility of applying electrokinetics to thin film lubrication, a project that is mostly applicable to devices such as MEMS and magnetic data storage devices.

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producing organic photovoltaics ioannis (John) Kymissis ElEctRical EnginEERing

ong before the gulf oil spill and President obama’s call for new efforts to reduce u.S. dependence on oil, columbia researchers were working to reduce our dependence on the world’s rapidly dwindling supply of fossil fuels by finding new ways to provide electricity that are more economical, efficient, and accessible. ioannis (John) Kymissis, assistant professor in the Department of electrical engineering, and his team are working on producing organic photovoltaics that are easier and cheaper to manufacture than solar cells currently on the market. Photovoltaics have been around for more than 50 years. They are currently used in a variety of applications, including powering remote equipment and recharging batteries in remotely deployed electronics. of even greater potential impact, however, could be the broad deployment of photovoltaics for gridscale renewable power generation. in addition to providing a clean source of renewable energy, such installations potentially present a number of gridlevel advantages in both advanced and developing

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economies. Distributed power generation through photovoltaics can reduce the load on strained distribution systems and provide power to remote locations where it may be cost-prohibitive or environmentally problematic to run power lines. The rate of photovoltaic production has been increasing rapidly—more than 50 percent per year— but photovoltaics are still dwarfed by other sources of energy. Kymissis notes that photovoltaics produced only 0.02 percent of the total energy used in the united States last year: a new approach to photovoltaics is required to meet global energy needs. Photovoltaics can be part of a solution that insures a sustainable future, one with reduced energy intensity and using new sources that are renewable and carbon-neutral. Kymissis’ team is involved in improving the performance and processability of photovoltaics using organic thin-film semiconductor materials that are elementally abundant, inexpensive to synthesize, and straightforward to deposit in large installations. The team is working on how

to improve efficiency, reduce processing costs, improve storage lifetime, and increase the operating lifetime of organic photovoltaic devices. Kymissis believes that thin-film semiconductors, with their ability to scale to large sizes, can solve a variety of sensing and power conversion problems. His group can fabricate systems that integrate a variety of thin-film devices, including photovoltaics and organic photodetectors, organic field effect transistors, piezoelectric polymer sensors, and organic light-emitting diodes. These integrated devices can be used for applications in which electronics need to interface with large objects in the real world, such as sensors that can measure sound and airflow over an airplane wing. “it’s essential that we start working today to reduce our dependence on finite energy resources to insure a better standard of living for future generations than we have today.”

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storing Energy more Efficiently sanat Kumar chEmical EnginEEring

he battery has long been the energy storage device of choice. Despite such advancements as lithium-based and rechargeables, however, limitations persist in life span, storage capacity and weight. So, how to build a better battery? The best choice may not be a battery at all.

ment of Defense, making the move to electrified systems much more practical, for example, for aircraft launchers on ships. Further, since we want to use plastics to make these capacitors, it will provide considerable savings in weight, which is highly desirable from a fuel consumption point of view.”

required. Kumar’s research is aimed at developing higher energy density dielectric materials that enable the fabrication of capacitors so that they can operate at temperatures above 150°C and can handle high-voltage and high-ripple current at frequencies over 20 kHz.

A growing number of researchers—including Sanat Kumar, professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering—are working to make highenergy capacitors (energy storage devices) become a viable replacement in electronics, hybrid cars, and electric power systems.

Technological advancements would have an impact on transportation as well, Kumar says.

These new materials would be used to power electronics. At the same time, new technologies will be developed for fabricating compact, high-voltage, high-current, high-repetition-rate capacitors that deliver energy in sub-microseconds.

“Electrical energy is stored by a difference in charge between two metal surfaces, but unlike a battery, capacitors are designed to release their energy very quickly,” he said. The objective is to design highenergy capacitors, which would have a big impact on industry and the military. “Such an improvement in the state-of-the-art would have a substantial impact on the Depart-

“Advanced low-voltage capacitors are needed to facilitate more power-efficient and compact portable electronic devices for communications, medical applications, and high-power electronics, while advanced high-voltage capacitors are needed for reactive compensation of electric power systems, energy storage, and distribution related to the interfacing of renewable energy sources to the power grid,” said Kumar. To meet the present and future demand, substantial advances beyond the present state-of-the-art in dielectric materials and capacitor technology are

“We will help to model the behavior of new materials that the group will propose as new capacitors,” he said. “The goal is to design better capacitors from the ground up.” The project is on a 10-year timeline, but Kumar expects advancements will be made that can be incorporated into improving current capacitors in the short term.

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Engineering in the developing World ViJay modi mEchanical EnginEEring

Vijay modi is an engineer in search of problems. that is, he has changed the way he approaches engineering and, in the process, is helping address some seemingly minor challenges that, on further investigation, are extremely complex and can change the lives of a large portion of the world’s poor. “Instead of starting with a particular skill I have and trying to apply it, I’m trying to figure out what the interesting problems are and then seeing how we can bring engineering to bear on them.” Among those interesting problems are the suite of challenges that people in places like sub-Saharan Africa face every day and that can mean life or death. Sometimes it can be something as simple as creating an efficient, low-cost solar-powered lighting system that enables people in rural villages to do the things after sunset that others take for granted—like study or run a small shop. The trouble is, without looking for problems, the answers have not been forthcoming. By taking this bottom-up approach, Modi has discovered that he can categorize the problems he encounters into three groups: those he can make an immediate impact on, those he has little hope of solving, and those he might be able to solve with the help from the right people. It’s that last group of problems that has attracted his attention of late, particularly the ones that the diversity of knowledge within the University can solve by developing technologies or systems that can be commercialized to improve lives in remote and difficult places. It wasn’t always that way. When Modi arrived at Columbia in 1986, he focused on fairly conventional questions involving fluid flow and heat transfer. A meeting with Nicholas Themelis and exposure to the work of the Earth Engineering Center soon refocused his priorities on more applied problems that, as he describes it, have fallen through the cracks of

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the academic community and private sector alike. “Engineering research carried out in academia has started to lose connection with the profession of engineering, which is about solving problems,” said Modi, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “What historically separated science and engineering was that science was about the pursuit of knowledge and engineering has been about the pursuit of problems.” The key, he has found, lies in assembling people with the skills he needs and a desire to apply them to what, at first, might seem to be a problem not traditionally associated with those skills. For example, in recent work to understand the problem of local water access in Africa’s Sahel region, Modi assembled a team that included a remote sensing specialist, an expert on entrepreneurship and business, and a social scientist with experience understanding people’s environmental decision-making. Through his connections across the University, Modi has helped designed and test low-cost solutions to such developing-world problems as the need for a cleaner and more efficient cook stove to help reduce the environmental impact of burning fuel wood and robust IT systems that allow access to information from remote agricultural villages. “These are projects that are not typically driven by large amounts of funding, but they occur in places that are in need of innovation,” said Modi. “The key is to figure out how to make innovation happen in a low-cost market.”

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

predicting El niño marK canE appliEd physics and appliEd mathEmatics

ark Cane spent much of his early 20s protesting against the war in Vietnam and volunteering with the civil rights movement in the South. He remains a social activist, but today he does so from his position as one of the world’s top climate modelers. As science-based predictions of the weather a few days in advance were becoming routine, predicting the weather three or four months in advance was left to the likes of The Farmer’s Almanac.

regular progression of the seasons, no other phenomenon influences Earth’s short-term climate as profoundly as ENSO.

All that began to change in 1985 when Mark Cane and his student, Steve Zebiak, published the results of a model they developed to predict the movement of warm water across the tropical Pacific Ocean in a cyclical phenomenon known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. When it forms, El Niño’s meteorological reach spans the globe, causing a well-known pattern of extreme weather events. The 2009 El Niño, for example, resulted in deep droughts in India and the Philippines and deadly rains in Uganda. Aside from the

“People said, ‘What if you’re wrong?’” said Cane, the G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences and a professor in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “I said, ‘What if we’re right and we don’t tell anyone?’”

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The Zebiak-Cane model showed a moderate El Niño developing in late 1986. People in Peru, Australia, and elsewhere still had vivid memories of the devastating effects of the powerful El Niño that formed in 1982 and 1983, so many scientists opposed publishing forecasts they didn’t yet understand.

Cane and Zebiak published their forecast in Nature in June of that year, which gave anyone who cared to listen time to prepare. Despite a delay in

its formation early in the forecast window, by the autumn of 1986, the predicted El Niño developed, bringing its associated weather patterns to much of the globe. Most of Cane’s work since that time relates to the impacts of human-induced climate change and natural climate variability on people around the world, such as a seminal paper studying the implications of El Niño on maize yields in Zimbabwe. He has also created a highly successful master’s degree program in Climate and Society that prepares students to understand and cope with the impacts of climate variability and climate change on society and the environment. “Science should be more than just an academic exercise,” said Cane. “We’re not just predicting this thing in the Pacific; we’re trying to predict all these consequences around the world that people care about.”

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

modeling monsoons aDam sobEl appliED physics anD appliED mathEmatics

dam Sobel once bought a plane ticket to the city of Darwin in australia’s tropical north based on a colleague’s weather prediction. That in itself is nothing new, but the prediction he followed was for the start of the monsoon rains three weeks hence, a prediction that was virtually unheard of just a decade earlier for the length of its foresight. When he got off the plane, no one was happier to see the sky open up and the rain begin right on schedule. “We had half a meter of rain in ten days,” said Sobel, who holds a dual appointment in the Department of applied Physics and applied mathematics and the Department of earth and environmental Sciences. “it was exciting.” For more than one billion people, the seasonal monsoons are both a life-giving annual event and a potential disaster. although much is known about how the monsoons occur, very little is understood

about how they vary. The monsoons are an atmospheric circulation pattern that develops in the tropics at fairly well-defined times of year. The sun warming earth’s surface draws moisture from ocean waters and forms the iconic, seasonal rains of South and Southeast asia or sub-tropical africa and South america. The people who live in these regions, particularly the rural poor, rely on the monsoon rains to water crops and recharge aquifers. When the monsoons are weak, drought and famine can result; if they come with too much gusto, flooding and disease occur. The fine line between life and death makes monsoon forecasting one of the most important topics within climate modeling these days. Sobel is trying to develop models to predict the variations within a monsoon season, known as “active” and “break” cycles, which have so far been beyond the ability of climate modeling. recently, he helped demonstrate the central importance of heat stored in the oceans, particularly

in the so-called mixed layer that encompasses the top 10 to 50 meters of water, on the formation of active and break cycles. The atmospheric patterns that drive the monsoon— the madden Julian oscillation in particular—are also responsible for spawning tropical storms in distant ocean basins and may influence the formation of el niño and la niña cycles in the western Pacific. as a result, Sobel’s work may one day have an impact on people who live well beyond the reach of the monsoon rains. “We need a central theory that can be stated simply that explains the variations we see,” said Sobel. “Weather prediction can look two weeks in the future, max. climate models can give us the probability for a strong or weak monsoon a year in advance. This is in between. it’s kind of the Holy grail right now.”

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i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

capturing carbon ah-hyung (alissa) paRK EaRth anD EnViRonmEntal EnginEERing

ah-hyung (alissa) park has been called the “carbon lady” for good reason. she is considered to be one of the leading experts in the many forms carbon takes as humans transform and move it through society and the environment, and her path-breaking work may very well help pave the way to a future in which society obtains energy from a wide range of sustainable sources and deals with its excess carbon in surprising ways. “The future of humanity depends on our ability to use energy and materials with an eye toward environmental sustainability,” said Park, lenfest Junior Professor in applied climate Science and associate director of the lenfest center for Sustainable energy. “This will inevitably have to include efficient extraction of energy and materials from fossil resources, biomass, and municipal solid wastes.” Whether carbon takes the form of a lump of coal or a used plastic soda bottle, or becomes the end result of carbon capture and sequestration, Park looks for methods to improve the ways that carbon circulates through the industrial and environmental processes. “The reason we take so much carbon out of the ground is because of our needs for energy and materials,” said Park. “if we can find a way to keep the carbon circulating above ground while providing energy and materials, we won’t have to take so much out of the ground.” more than seven billion tons of carbon produced by human activity around the world ends up in the atmosphere each year, primarily in the form of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. being able to manage our increasingly prominent role in the global carbon cycle is an important and innovative step toward the sustainable future of our society. one of the ways Park attempts to do this is to investigate novel ways to integrate carbon capture

and storage technologies with those that synthesize hydrogen and liquid fuels from coal, biomass, and municipal solid wastes, including nonrecyclable plastics. Today, Park is also working to advance efforts to capture carbon dioxide from emissions and lock it away permanently and economically. To do this, she is exploring the use of nanoparticle ionic materials (nims), a new class of organic-inorganic hybrid materials that consist of a hard nanoparticle core surrounded by a functionalized corona. nims are essentially solvent-free, particle-based fluids that provide a large number of capture sites for co2. Since it has negligible vapor pressure, nims can be applied to various industrial processes with minimum environmental impacts. once the carbon dioxide has been captured, Park is also looking at ways to safely and permanently dispose of it as mineral carbonates or to convert it to other useful materials such as paper or plastic fillers. The key to achieving sustainability, she says, is to take a more expansive view of the systems that process carbon. “in the past, engineering has mainly focused on optimizing the individual unit of a process,” said Park. “Today, we need to look at the big picture and add environmental sustainability to our equations.” columbia engineering | 21

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

predicting Failure in ice shelves haim Waisman ciVil EnginEEring and EnginEEring mEchanics

he I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007 killed 13 people and resulted in untold economic disruption for the Upper Midwest. It also brought into stark relief a problem with the nation’s infrastructure that is, by its very nature, bound to get worse with time: it is old and getting older every day. For Haim Waisman, assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, the aging infrastructure also highlights a more general characteristic of any structure— everything breaks eventually. For that reason, Waisman is developing computational techniques to help understand how and why things fall apart, and how this may be predicted and prevented. “Fractures govern our lives,” he said. “Everything is connected by fractures.” Fractures also play a role in nature, and Waisman has recently turned his attention to a dramatic example—the collapse of ice shelves in Greenland

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and Antarctica. As the climate warms, water from melting ice seeps to the bottom of glaciers, allowing them to slide more easily over bedrock and forming networks of cracks in ice shelves. Over the course of about a month in 2002, 1,250 square miles of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in West Antarctica shattered, sending icebergs into southern shipping lanes and permitting glaciers linked to the shelf to speed up. Since then, several other shelves have collapsed, raising concerns that the massive ice cap covering the continent is on the move, threatening sea-level rise around the world. Waisman is refining computational methods known as extended finite elements and multiscale modeling to design high-strength, nano-composite materials that might one day shore up aging structures, such as pipes and bridges, in corrosive environments. He also has developed a noninvasive method of detecting fractures in things such as airplane wings using measurements from only a few common stress sensors.

In particular, he has been using his methods to study how suspension bridge cables age. The main cables are made of thousands of wires clamped and wound together. When a wire breaks, the loads it carries are redistributed to neighboring wires. Understanding and predicting the fracture response of the entire cable involves taking into consideration as many as 50,000 wires wound into a tightly compressed bundle more than two miles long and requires a supercomputer. He has found that, when a wire breaks, friction between the remaining wires can effectively transfer the strain throughout the cable bundle without compromising the entire bridge. That’s a relief for the millions of people who daily cross the graceful but aging bridges that lead into and out of Manhattan. Understanding how things like ice shelves and bridges break and fail is a necessary first step to understanding the inevitable, inexorable changes that are going on all around us all the time.

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

understanding Extremes of global tuncEl yEgulalp Warming

Earth and EnVironmEntal EnginEEring

“E

xtreme” is perhaps the last thing that comes to mind when talking to Tuncel Yegulalp. “Orderly” and “soft-spoken” seem more appropriate. Nevertheless, the professor of mining in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering was the last student of Columbia professor E. J. Gumbel, who helped found the field of extreme value statistics. Today, Yegulalp is a leading expert in the field, which is used to analyze and predict statistical outliers of common events, such as large earthquakes and severe floods, as well as the failure strength of rocks. In addition, his career has recently come full circle, returning him to the fields of mining and geology that originally brought him to Columbia, only this time he’s trying to figure out how to put something into the ground—namely, carbon dioxide—rather than remove it. Yegulalp arrived at Columbia from his native Turkey in 1963 to continue his studies of uranium min-

ing. It was during that time he discovered “there was more to the world than just uranium.” That world included a graduate course in extreme value statistics—a class for which students had to be interviewed and handpicked by Gumbel in order to register. Yegulalp and another professor tried to use extreme value analysis to develop a statistical model of large earthquakes, but gaps in the seismic record made it impossible to create accurate forecasts. Yegulalp eventually devised a new method to allow for the data gaps, but it wasn’t until 1999 that he was able to verify his work. While on vacation in Turkey, he experienced the magnitude 7.6 Izmit earthquake. Fortunately, he had brought with him a laptop with his earthquake forecasting model, and he found that the Izmit quake fit squarely into the range of what might be expected, given its magnitude and the time since the region’s last large event. These days, Yegulalp is teaching extreme value methods to an entirely new group of students who are interested in understanding and predicting ex-

tremes of climate, such as flooding and high winds, that might arise in the wake of global warming. At the same time, Yegulalp is trying to help stave off the worst of those extreme events by applying his expertise in geology, mining, and refinery systems to projects focusing on geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide. The idea is that pumping carbon dioxide into minerals such as serpentinite that contain magnesium will form magnesium carbonate, a stable solid that will keep the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere permanently. The only problem, he says, is the sheer volume of the carbon dioxide we will eventually have to sequester and the large amount of magnesium carbonate rock that will result. “If we want to maintain coal as a major contributor of energy, we’re going to have to mine at least 6 billion tons of rock per year and learn to dispose of an even greater weight and volume of magnesium carbonate,” said Yegulalp. Spoken like someone with a mind for extremes.

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Fostering news Ways to “green” ponissEril somasundaran Earth and EnVironmEntal EnginEEring

ask ponisseril somasundaran to say something in hindi and he will jokingly beg ignorance aside from “a few common bad words.” ask him what he thinks “sustainability” means, though, and he will quote the hindu tenet of niskam karma, or selfless action, that entails making sacrifices today for the sake of the future. A world leader in surfactant science, the LaVon Duddleson Krumb Professor of Mineral Engineering is best known for his groundbreaking contributions in the field of surfactant self-assembly at solidliquid interfaces and in solution. Somasundaran has used his expertise to take on problems as wideranging as the enrichment of scarce mineral from ultra-lean ores, to the impact of cigarette smoke on lungs, to the behavior of nanoparticles. His current mantra, however, is sustainability. “Sustainability has several different meanings,” he said. “It is like the four blind men describing an elephant.” In that Sufi tale, four blind men each disagree about the true nature of an elephant because each feels a different part of the animal. Like those men—but with his eyes wide open— Somasundaran is approaching sustainability from several perspectives. “There is a fundamental disconnect in the sustainability movement when it comes to consumer products,” he said. “An increasing number of people are choosing products based on third-party green certification, but many of these labeling programs give little weight to the full scope of a product’s lifecycle, from manufacture and shipping, to use and disposal.” An example is liquid soaps and detergents, which contain large amounts of water to help improve their viscosity and make them easy to use. So-

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masundaran’s approach has been to reduce the amount of water in these products to lower the amount of packaging they require and the amount of fuel needed to ship them—aspects not commonly addressed in the identification and marketing of “green” products. He has applied a similar water-saving approach to mineral processing and mine tailing treatment by developing chemicals that require less water consumption, resulting in more efficient production of basic materials. More recently, Somasundaran has begun to focus on agriculture, which is notorious for its enormous demand for water. In many parts of the world, water scarcity is a rapidly growing problem affecting millions of people. As a result, even a relatively modest savings in agricultural water use could translate to huge gains globally. He is exploring the use of cellulose nanoparticles, which naturally curl to trap droplets of water and which uncurl under certain conditions. He is trying to develop a targeted release mechanism to water just the roots of crops and only when the soil is too dry or when high temperatures threaten crops. His next target may be the very notion of sustainability itself and the “carbon footprint.” Based on everything he has seen through his work, Somasundaran is convinced that focusing solely on carbon is far too narrow. “We need to broaden our notion of what is sustainable,” he said. Then, perhaps, we will all be able to see the entire elephant.

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

making concrete “green” chRistian mEyER ciVil EnginEERing anD EnginEERing mEchanics

ne of the world’s most important, versatile, and widely used building materials, concrete, also leaves a huge environmental footprint. in the u.S. alone, the annual production of more than 500 million tons averages about two tons per man, woman, and child. in addition, the annual production of Portland cement, a basic ingredient of concrete, is estimated to cause the release of one ton of co2 into the atmosphere. The cement industry alone generates about 7 percent of this greenhouse gas across the globe.

but, as christian meyer, professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics, has shown, properly produced concrete is inherently an environmentally friendly material—if, as he puts it, “you use as much concrete with as little Portland cement as possible.” at the forefront of what he calls the “greening of the concrete industry,” meyer is focused on advancing the state of the art in concrete technology, covering the full spectrum of research activities from basic science to commercial production. He has had great success using recycled materials in concrete, most notably, glass. early attempts to

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use postconsumer glass failed because of the alkalisilica reaction, which can lead to severe damage of the concrete. meyer and his collaborators figured out how to solve the problem using various cementitious admixtures as partial substitutes for Portland cement and since have shown how colored glass can be incorporated for stunning architectural and decorative concrete applications, including tiles and countertops. He has added shredded Styrofoam to make lightweight concrete that not only has strong insulating and acoustic qualities but is also cheaper to transport to sites. He is currently exploring using recycled concrete as aggregate, noting that the u.S. generates about 150 million tons of construction waste annually and that concrete debris is more than 50 percent of that amount. meyer says that a key challenge is to identify special properties intrinsic to recycled materials that can be exploited and thereby generate added value, as in the glass tiles his team has made. He adds that the use of recycled materials in concrete is governed by economic factors: “The profit motive is key—if people don’t think they can earn a rea-

sonable profit doing something, they won’t do it.” but rather than simply using any waste materials as ingredients of concrete, meyer prefers to explore how to add value to the various waste stream components and find ways to make better, more useful products while conserving natural resources. Professor meyer is also using his expertise in concrete technology to explore ways to safeguard oil wells drilled deep into the ocean floor. He is working on determining the properties of oil well cement slurries that hydrate under the high pressures and temperatures downhole, because such properties are different from those of slurries that hydrate under ambient conditions. He is hoping to develop novel cementitious materials with greatly improved performance characteristics that will reinforce the cement slurry with appropriate types of fibers to improve the fracture behavior and energy absorption capacity of the finished cement sheath. a specially developed device to measure the properties of slurries that hydrate under simulated downhole conditions has undergone the first successful tests in the carleton laboratory of the civil engineering Department.

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

raising the roof huiming yin ciVil EnginEEring and EnginEEring mEchanics

f Huiming Yin has his way, solar panels will one day all but disappear from view on rooftops— and from a builder’s bottom line. Yin is working on a prototype for an inexpensive photovoltaic (pv) cell that produces both electricity and hot water. Integrating his new design into roofing materials may one day eliminate the need for both solar panels and roofing shingles. Sunlight spans a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum—from nearly 120 to 20,000 nanometers— but the typical pv cell can convert only a narrow sliver of this to electricity. The rest is “wasted” or converted to heat—the enemy of many pv cells. In particular, the most inexpensive silicone-based cells virtually stop producing a current above 85º Celsius, but rooftop solar cells often reach temperatures exceeding 100º Celsius, making them all but useless in most parts of the world. “As civil engineers, we want to produce something that really changes people’s lives,” said Yin. Yin’s

design incorporates a functionally graded material (FGM), a relatively new type of material made up of two components that, instead of meeting in an abrupt transition, change gradually in composition from one to the other. This allows designers to take advantage of the physical properties of both components without having to create a physical bond between them—often the weakest point in any composite. The FGM that Yin uses in his solar panels helps both draw heat from the base of the photovoltaic cell and insulate the roof. Water-filled tubes embedded in the thin FGM layer carry that heat away to be used in the building. By cooling the cell, Yin is aiming to improve the efficiency of existing silicone pv cells. Yin, who recently won the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award honoring junior faculty, came to Columbia in 2008. Prior to arriving, he focused his research on devising new ways to im-

prove the wear and durability of roads and other paved surfaces using FGMs to prevent buckling and heat stress. The shingled roof, which is essentially another asphalt-covered surface, seemed like the next obvious focus of Yin’s attention—particularly when that surface is forced into double duty as both a shelter and an energy producer. Installing solar panels on an existing roof, he says, is a quintessential civil engineering problem, one that involves structural dynamics, wind loading, and heat dissipation. The next step is to fashion his cells into durable roofing elements that can take the place of shingles. Yin envisions a day when any building will be able to convert sunlight to electricity and hot water for less than the cost of a conventional roof. Until that time, he will continue trying to change the world, one rooftop at a time.

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greening infrastructure patricia culligan ciVil EnginEEring and EnginEEring mEchanics

if american infrastructure were a student project, it would barely pass muster. in 2009, the american society of civil Engineers gave the country’s water and sewage treatment, energy, and transportation backbone a barely passing grade of d, citing long-overdue maintenance and lack of muchneeded upgrades. Patricia Culligan believes she can begin to address some of these inadequacies by changing the way engineers design infrastructure. At the same time, her work may help improve conditions for millions around the world living in rapidly growing urban slums who lack basic services. The massive, centralized infrastructure projects that are hallmarks of modern civil engineering in many ways define and enable modern society. But Culligan would replace or augment these with smaller, more decentralized systems and facilities that can either meet the needs of a fast-growing population or help take the strain off an existing, aging network. One way is studying the role of small-scale infrastructure projects by examining the effectiveness of green roofs—flat roofs covered in a thin layer of vegetation—to cool buildings and reduce or mitigate storm runoff that flows from buildings into overburdened water treatment facilities. Despite their growing popularity, Culligan has found that many arguments in favor of green roofs are lacking. “A lot of the claims being made are simply not proven,” said the professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics. “If this is going to work, there needs to be a scientific rationale behind it.” Culligan began her career studying the transport of chemical and radioactive contaminants through porous media such as soil, fractured rock, and ocean sediments, and later focused on mitigating

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contaminated groundwater. Since green roofs contain a thin layer of porous media through which water passes before being taken up by the plants or released, it was a natural segue to quantifying the technology’s function and effect. Her work also dovetails with a larger movement to devise solutions that will improve living conditions for poor communities in developing countries where fast-growing demands for services such as sewage treatment far outstrip supply. In addition, old wastewater treatment systems in places such as New York City are routinely overwhelmed by street and building runoff, resulting in millions of gallons of raw sewage being dumped in local waterways. Green roofs may help absorb some of the runoff. Columbia has seven green roofs, many of which Culligan and her colleagues have instrumented to study heat and fluid flows through the system. But the heart of the local green roof movement is the South Bronx, where many neighborhoods, finding themselves politically isolated, have begun to look for their own community-based solutions to such socially complex problems as environmental pollution. For this reason, Culligan has made community partnerships and interdisciplinary research the core of her approach. This is, she says, typical of the role civil engineers have played in society since the field’s formation in the 18th century. “Our work is about giving people a better life,” said Culligan. “It’s about helping society prosper.”

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

characterizing nanoparticles for Fuel cells simon billingE appliEd physics and appliEd mathEmatics

he solid oxide fuel cell, which runs on hydrogen and oxygen to produce water as exhaust, is seen as a promising technology of the future for transportation. These fuel cells are now used on an experimental basis to power city buses. But the fuel cells have proved unreliable because the nanoparticles of platinum that serve as a catalyst for the chemical reaction sometimes do not function optimally, which results in inefficient operation. “Scientists want to exploit the nanoparticle in the device but still don’t know that particle’s basic properties,” said Simon Billinge, professor of materials science. “Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.” These catalysts, nanoparticles of platinum, are

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one-millionth of a millimeter in thickness. The properties of the metal change when they are so small, and scientists have yet to fully characterize their properties. By determining the nanoparticle’s structure and properties—its electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, melting point, and stiffness—scientists will be better able to predict a fuel cell’s performance, based on what particular nanoparticle is used as the catalyst.

mos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

To help provide a solution, Billinge is developing new methods to characterize the structure of nanoparticles, figuring out the arrangements of atoms in particles that are made up of a few hundred to a few thousand atoms. He uses intense x-ray and neutron-source technology, carrying out his research in particle accelerators at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, the Los Ala-

He also has worked on measuring the surface energy of the platinum catalyst. The surface atoms, like those on the meniscus of a water droplet, have higher energy than those inside of the particle. And it’s the surface area of the nanoparticles that provides the reactivity for the hydrogen and oxygen that come together to produce the energy that propels the vehicle.

In these accelerators, the nanoparticles of platinum circle at high energy, with the x-ray beam providing data on the defraction patterns revealed in the experiment. Billinge has made important breakthroughs by developing novel Fourier transform methods to analyze the data.

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

peer networking to save Energy John tayloR ciVil EnginEERing anD EnginEERing mEchanics

ll that time people spent on Facebook and chatting with friends may one day help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. research by John Taylor and his team has shown that networks may hold one key to achieving—and maintaining—reductions in residential energy use in densely populated urban areas. “retrofitting existing buildings is definitely going to be an important component of any plan to reduce urban energy consumption,” said Taylor, assistant professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics. “but research has demonstrated there is a take-back effect where energy use can actually increase after such measures are implemented and people return to their old behaviors.” buildings account for about 40 percent of total u.S. energy use, but in densely populated areas, that number can double. in new York city in 2005, for example, the built environment accounted for nearly 80 percent of the 58.3 million tons of co2-

equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. over the next twenty years, that is expected to grow by nearly one-third. governments at all levels are looking for ways to address the emissions problem. many of these initiatives, however, focus on improving energy storage, transmission, and appliance efficiency. Taylor and his team decided to take another path and focus on the way people use energy and, more importantly, the way people reduce their energy consumption. With a grant from the earth institute, Taylor and his team instrumented all 89 rooms of Watt residence Hall with real-time energy-monitoring devices, developed a system to track and share energy-use information among members of peer networks, and organized a series of experiments to examine whether and how peer networks played a role in reducing energy consumption. The results were surprising, even for an age in which social networking seems ubiquitous. in the

two periods studied, participants in the network group used between 20 and 28 percent less energy than the nonparticipating, nonnetworked building occupants, and, at times, were using an average of as much as 50 percent less than nonparticipants. more importantly, the network group was able to keep their energy use down over a much longer period. next, Taylor and an interdisciplinary group of collaborators and students at columbia are turning their attention to the diffusion of energy conservation practices through occupant networks and are developing computational models to emulate and predict the impact of peer network–induced reductions in energy utilization in other buildings. “buildings don’t use energy, people do” said Taylor. “To achieve the ambitious greenhouse gas emission reductions being set by our local and national leaders, our results show that we need to look more closely at exactly how networks and information sharing influence energy consumption.”

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solving the global Water crisis upmanu lall Earth and EnvironmEntal EnginEEring

the Journal of International Affairs might seem like an odd place for an engineer to publish, as upmanu lall recently did, but the alan and carol silberstein professor of Engineering is used to addressing big questions with broad reach. Foremost in his mind these days: Will we run out of fresh water in the twenty-first century? Since the 1980s, lall has been focused on how society and water intersect. His interest began when he moved to Texas from his native india in order to study systems analysis and very quickly got involved in one of the most complex systems in the american West—water use. as part of his doctoral thesis, lall examined the state’s future energy and water demands, treating both as parts of one vast, interconnected system with often-conflicting parts. Today, lall sees a looming global water crisis, but one that is overshadowed in some quarters by climate change. The problem may arise from the fact that the water crisis, as he sees it, is actually three separate crises—one of access, one of pollution, and one of scarcity—that do not lend themselves to simple solutions. moreover, each is inexorably linked to the others and to additionally intractable problems like climate change and population growth. in response, lall helped found the columbia Water center in order to address climate risk management, development and the environment, and food security across a range of temporal and spatial scales. “The possibility that north india may run out of groundwater in a decade, leading to a collapse of agriculture in india, is not viewed as a global problem,” lall and his co-authors wrote in

the Journal of International Affairs. “in essence, the global crisis is viewed as a collection of local crises—whether they are related to access, pollution, or scarcity—for which there is a global policy imperative. We rarely address the global elements of these individual problems.” a key player that lall has identified in the looming water crisis is agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of global water use on average and more than 90 percent in arid regions. lall thinks it would not be out of the question to triple the efficiency of water use by improving irrigation systems and by changing the way farmers water their crops. but remaining true to his systems background, lall does not stop there. He also sees room for improving water use by improving food processing, storage, and delivery as a means of reducing the 30 to 40 percent crop loss that currently occurs in much of the developing world. With one-third of the developing world expected to confront severe water shortages in this century, it is not a problem that the rest of the world, including engineers, can ignore or avoid. instead, lall sees it as a problem that is particularly suited to an engineer’s mindset. “The goal of engineering is to develop solutions to societal problems,” said lall. “This fits into the domain of engineering better than anything else.”

columbia engineering | 33

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

using nanomaterials for solar cells tony heinz electrical engineering

he amount of energy from the sun that falls to earth far, far exceeds our demand for energy. Sunlight would surely be of broad use in today’s world if we could capture and convert it into electricity sufficiently efficiently and economically. The conversion of light to electricity is carried out in photovoltaic devices or, as they are known more commonly, solar cells. These devices are typically made from silicon. Silicon, the basis for electronic circuits, is in many ways an excellent material. However, the basic properties of electrons in silicon imply that more than two-thirds of the incident energy will necessarily end up as heat rather than as electricity. is there a way to avoid this energy loss and increase the efficiency of photovoltaic devices? Tony Heinz, David m. rickey Professor of optical communications in the Department of electrical engineering, and professor of physics in the graduate School of arts and Sciences, is working with an interdisciplinary team of colleagues on a project that

34 | columbia engineering

may revolutionize both our understanding of energyconversion processes and the practical production of electricity from sunlight. He and his group are exploring a fundamentally new type of energyconversion process, one in which a single absorbed photon creates two or more electronic excitations in a suitable nanostructured material. While this process, known as multiple exciton generation (meg), is intrinsically weak in conventional semiconducting materials, Heinz is convinced that it will work if the right materials—novel nanoscale materials—are found. Heinz and his collaborators are making such structures—individual nanoscale photovoltaic devices based on carbon nanotubes and other tailored nanoscale materials—in which these ideas can be rigorously tested. He says that both the electrical and optical measurements require experimental advances. The program builds on recent progress by his group and collaborators in extracting photogen– erated charges from individual carbon nanotubes on

the one hand and, on the other hand, in directly measuring the amount of light absorbed by such tiny structures through the use of new laser-based techniques. “This is very a exciting fundamental scientific issue that goes to the core of understanding how light interacts with electrons in solids. at the same time, it is a problem with the potential to have an important impact on addressing the world’s needs for sustainable energy,” says Heinz. “as part of the energy Frontier research center recently established at columbia university with the support of the u.S. Department of energy, we have the good fortune of being able to pursue these fascinating questions. at columbia, we also benefit from an excellent collaborative research environment. This allows us to bring together the diverse expertise in science and engineering disciplines that is indispensible for progress in attacking these demanding problems.”

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

making a smarter power grid rogEr andErson cEntEr For computational lEarning systEms

he advancements ushered in by the digital age have touched nearly every area of human existence in the world, from how people shop and navigate their vehicles to how they work and consume news and entertainment. However, complex power grids—which connect us with many of these relatively new technologies—are still mostly stuck in the analog age.

The aSc is an algorithm-based, machine learning system that will allow the Smart grid to calculate, on a minute-by-minute basis, the cheapest, most efficient and most reliable ways of delivering electricity to consumers. it also will allow the Smart grid to anticipate and respond automatically to problem events, such as weather changes and equipment failures, in order to prevent power outages.

one man who wants to change that is senior research scientist roger anderson, the con edison Senior Scholar at columbia engineering’s center for computational learning Systems. He and colleague albert boulanger have developed a patented adaptive Stochastic controller (aSc) technology that will be part of con edison’s Smart grid Demonstration Project.

columbia’s role is to produce the aSc for the new York city Smart grid Demonstration Project, funded by the federal Department of energy (Doe), to help build a smarter, more efficient, more resilient national electric grid.

“We are trying to make the electric grid smarter, much more like the internet, so that control systems can route power to where people need it, when they need it, and from green sources as much as possible,” says anderson.

last november, the Doe awarded con edison $45 million for its Secure interoperable open Smart grid Demonstration Project—one of sixteen projects selected nationwide. The new York Public Service commission will provide additional matching funds to make it the largest Smart grid Demonstration Project in america.

once the Smart grid is implemented, anderson says, “Things will happen too fast for optimal decision making by humans—even from the highly skilled operators at con edison.” The Smart grid will use columbia-designed aSc computer control to respond more quickly to power surges and emergency outages so that power can be redistributed to where it’s needed, using photovoltaics, wind, battery storage, and other green sources from areas with less demand. “The whole idea of the Smart grid is to have enough computer intelligence so you can control [the grid] better and make it more stable,” anderson says. Such technology is also being developed in europe and china, he says, and an international utility working group has been established to share bestpractice ideas and technologies across the globe.

columbia engineering | 35

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

sustaining the environment peter schlosser earth and environmental engineering

any one of peter schlosser’s three jobs could be a full-time undertaking. First, he studies earth’s hydrosphere, past and present climate, and human impact on the environment as vinton professor of earth and environmental engineering and professor of earth and environmental sciences. Second, as senior staff scientist at lamont-Doherty earth observatory, he is involved in an array of large scientific programs that support such things as international polar research. Finally, he is the associate director and director of research at the earth institute. rather than keeping them separate in his mind and on his plate, however, he tackles all three by doing the exact opposite. “They all retain some distinct character,” said Schlosser. “but in my daily life, they are all intertwined.” not only are they intertwined, but they also speak to the way Schlosser has always approached his work. as an undergraduate student in his native germany, he chose to study physics at a university with a long tradition and broadly based research and teaching because, he said, he wanted to see science as a holistic part of the entire university. Physics, he felt, gave him the opportunity to acquire a set of skills that would be useful for studying a wide range of scientific problems with societal relevance. He eventually ended up in environmental physics, in part because of a natural curiosity in the world around him. Since arriving at columbia in 1989, Schlosser has continued to feed his omnivorous curiosity about his surroundings by fostering connections with faculty members from departments across campus. That broad perspective has helped him become

36 | columbia engineering

a key part of efforts to establish and expand the earth institute, an initiative that brings together faculty and students from throughout columbia to search for ways to foster sustainable development as an academic discipline. Schlosser has been integral in guiding the institute’s research agenda, which focuses on developing practical solutions to the problems that humankind faces in designing a sustainable future. at the same time, he recently founded the columbia climate center, a part of the earth institute that specifically addresses society’s needs for strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change. “Whether we can turn the world from a non-sustainable to a sustainable path has been on my mind a lot,” said Schlosser. “i don’t think we have a real answer yet, but the important thing is that we can see a path forward that is supported by technological innovation.” in addition, Schlosser sees the need—now more than ever—for a greater emphasis to be placed on communicating the messages of science clearly and accurately to a public that is often charged with making difficult decisions about what policies to enact and how to allocate resources to achieve a sustainable future. exactly how to do that is a difficult question, but one that he feels should be answerable if involvement from many different fields across campus can be achieved. “That, to me, is enough motivation to continue working and to look for solutions.”

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

looking at light richard osgood ElEctrical EnginEEring

ometimes, to solve big problems, you have to think small. richard osgood thinks very small. one of the biggest energy questions today is how to make solar cells more efficient and more affordable. This is particularly important for the billion or so people who live in poverty and, in most cases, entirely off the grid.

osgood and the other members of the Surface group in his research laboratory for Fundamental and applied Science study the basic processes that allow some materials to convert light to electricity. it is a phenomenon that makes photovoltaic cells and fuel cells possible and that lies at the foundation of many hopes for a more sustainable future. but for all its promise, the process is surprisingly not well understood. “This is a very basic question we’re trying to address,” said osgood, Higgins Professor of electrical engineering and a professor in the Department of applied Physics and applied mathematics. “We

38 | columbia engineering

need to know more about the fundamentals that limit the efficiency of charge transfer.” He and his team use ultrashort bursts of laser light to watch individual molecules of titanium dioxide accept or reject electrons. They also have made some of the first studies of titanium dioxide nanoparticles using the atomic-level resolution of a scanning tunneling microscope (STm) to understand how these novel structures can be used to improve solar cells. Titanium dioxide is of particular interest because it is used in graetzel cells, a type of low-cost photovoltaic cell that is easy to manufacture from readily available materials. most low-cost cells are sensitive to only a narrow band of sunlight. The graetzel cell, however, contains a layer of organic dye that produces free electrons from a wide spectrum of sunlight, much like chlorophyll does in plants. These electrons are then taken up by the titanium dioxide semiconductor to produce a current.

The trouble is, graetzel cells are only about 7 to 10 percent efficient, meaning that, at best, only one out of ten free electrons produces a current. osgood and others would like to improve on this, but the reasons why one electron is captured and another is not remain elusive. by firing extremely short (10–15 femtosecond) bursts of laser light at a titanium dioxide crystal and simultaneously watching with an STm, osgood and his team are nearing the ability to observe individual electrons being taken up or rejected by the crystal matrix. The rise of far-reaching, basic science studies like his—that span physics, chemistry, and engineering—gives osgood hope that, by focusing on the small stuff, answers to the big questions are not far off. “The world is changing in the way things are done,” he said. “The number of people doing interdisciplinary work is growing every day. it’s an exciting time.”

i m pa c t o n s u s ta i n a b i l i t y

harvesting Energy via nanomechanics Xi chEn Earth and EnvironmEntal EnginEEring

very day around the world, an enormous amount of energy is wasted during power generation. The efficiency of fossil fuel power plants in the u.S. alone is about 40 percent and that of solar panels 25 percent (already close to their theoretical upper limits), with the majority of the chemical and solar energies lost as low-grade heat. While scientists work on producing low-cost, efficient “clean” energy, 70 percent of the u.S. still relies on traditional carbon-based power and it is clear that, over the next few decades, we will still have to live with these traditional energy sources. one researcher who may have found a way to harvest some of this lost energy through nanomechanics is Xi chen, associate professor in the Department of earth and environmental engineering. He is working with nanoporous materials, including nanoporous carbon, silica, and zeolite, materials that are readily available and low-cost, to convert ambient thermal or mechanical energy to electricity. The ultra-large specific pore surface area (millions of times larger than their bulk counterparts)

provides an ideal platform for energy conversion that yields unprecedented performance. Since only liquids may fully access and take advantage of the surface area of nanoporous materials, chen has coupled nanoporous solids and functional liquids to create a multifunctional nanocomposite. “Depending on the combination of the solid matrix and liquid filler, the thermomechanical and electrochemical processes amplified by the large surface area may enable high-efficiency energy conversion among mechanical, thermal, and electrical energies,” he said. For example, the nanocomposite can simultaneously harvest electricity from the ambient low-grade heat and/or mechanical motions that are otherwise wasted or even damaging (such as machine vibration that can cause fatigue). Significant power output—many times higher than other energyharvesting materials—has already been successfully demonstrated by his group.

chen envisions that the integration of such a system into existing power plants would be relatively simple, requiring no major change, and the nanocomposite would generate “recovered” power as inexpensively as several cents per watt. He is currently in talking stages with several companies for implementing this technique. Xi chen is also looking ahead, “not so far into the future,” he says, to multifunctional nanocomposite materials that could have broad, almost mindboggling impacts: things like self-powered liquid armor that not only protects soldiers but also alleviates their battery needs, impact/blast-resistant skin for vehicles or aircraft whose shape will also morph to perform optimized functions, self- and wirelessly powered sensors, among others. With these wide potential applications in aerospace, military, national security, and consumer areas, Xi chen is at the frontier of generating building blocks of intelligent materials for a smarter and more sustainable planet.

columbia engineering | 39

new global reach for sustainable community projects

olumbia engineering’s First-Year Design course is going global, giving students the opportunity to build upon the program’s stateside success to work on numerous sustainability projects around the globe. in addition to pursuing ongoing projects in new York city, students will be able to work on sustainability projects in communities in ghana, South africa, Haiti, and guatemala. “our students are being trained to become global engineers and leaders; providing the opportunity for students to think about design in a global context at the very start of their engineering education is a truly excellent augmentation,” says civil engineering and engineering mechanics Professor Patricia culligan. originally a straightforward modeling class for incoming students, the course has evolved into an innovative design course integrating community-based learning, with students working actively on real projects in the community. The course cuts across academic departments, combining technical and professional training with social awareness. “This format gives students real-world experience right at the start of their undergraduate educations and helps them understand the social implications of engineering design,” says Senior Vice-Dean mort Friedman. Sustainability offers just the sort of interdisciplinary problem space that works perfectly for students. The global communities face enormous economic and environmental challenges, especially in the areas of energy, water, and waste. Just like in the new York city version, students learn engineering design by working in teams on real projects for clients in the community, often community-based organizations or local social innovators. Students can choose both the communities they will work with and the projects they take on. The new focus on environmental and economic sustainability also dovetails with the course’s emphasis on hands-on learning. “We knew we were doing an excellent job of training in design, but we came to realize that we weren’t fully addressing the full range of student interest,” says Senior associate Dean Jack mcgourty, who leads the course’s instructional team. “many, even most, of our projects culminated

40 | engineering neWS

in a comprehensive design, but we realized that students wanted tangible projects; they wanted to build something.” now, each project requires students to identify pressing local needs, design a technological solution, then build and test it. as part of their training, all students must master a suite of design software and demonstrate the ability to integrate complex calculations into their projects. “if it doesn’t feature design-build-test, it won’t be a first-year project,” says mcgourty. The challenge is to develop solutions that are culturally appropriate, economically feasible, and environmentally sustainable. That means both the materials and tools used must be accessible and affordable to local residents. So students have to research inexpensive materials (which are often used, discarded, or recycled) that are readily available within their target community. Deliverables will include do-it-yourself guides that will be fully accessible to target communities. “We hope students appreciate the impact that low-cost, practical solutions can have,” says Promiti Dutta, a member of the instructional team. “We expect that teams will develop projects that cost about $25 to $50 to build,” says greg Van Kirk, the School’s social entrepreneur in residence and another member of the instructional team. moreover, he says, the students must come up with designs that can be built, maintained, and potentially sold on a local level at an affordable price. “We hope that the student teams will be able to develop solutions that could be manufactured or produced at scale by local individuals.” Van Kirk, who is an ashoka Fellow with wide experience with international social entrepreneurs and innovators, is the “client representative” for teams working on global projects. He connects students with local social entrepreneurs and nongovernmental organizations (ngos) to help organize projects based on their assessment of local needs. “our goal is to create a widely accessible, updatable, web-based library of practical and impactful DiY sustainability solutions that will help people at the base of the socioeconomic pyramid,” he says.

FirST-Year DeSign ProJecTS, 2010–2011 Solar still Biodigester Solar oven Solar water heater Biosand water filter Silver colloidial water filter Rainwater harvesting system Gray water system Water pump Drip irrigation system Wind turbine Improved cook stove Technologically feasible refrigerator Solar light/cell phone charger Brick making machine Seed press

at the end of the semester, students, instructional staff, and clients will vote on the best technology projects in each class. These will be made available, free of charge, on a columbia website.

Sheller

The enhanced format is a win-win for students and the community. Students gain technical skills while providing real solutions for at-risk communities in new York city and in the developing world. and clients get access to simple, easy-to-build designs that are practical, culturally appropriate, and sustainable.

Rooftop gardens

Microhydropower Composting toilets “Green” building materials

columbia engineering | 41

705 1864 201013%1687811864 SEAS BY THE NUMBERS

SeaS undergraduate applications

Selectivity rate for First-Year classes

5,000 4,154

4,431

4,000

50%

50 40

3,000

2,439

27%

2,332

27%

2,000 1,351

13%

2009

2010

1,000 0

14%

1995

2000

2005

2009

2010

1995

2000

2005

average SaT Scores for SeaS admitted classes

Top industries for undergraduates

1600

Financial Services

38.7%

Consulting Services

15.1%

Computer (Hardware, Software, Internet, Systems)

13.0%

Engineering

10.9%

1500 1400

1445

1480

1487

1495

1373

1300 1200 0

1995

42 | engineering neWS

2000

2005

2009

2010

Education

3.3%

Research

3.2%

Construction / Mining

2.2%

Manufacturing and Production

2.2%

Military

2.2%

Others

9.2%

168 168444312010 64 201013% number of applications for graduate Programs

PhD acceptance rate

6,000

5,130

5,000

28%

4,232 4,000

20%

19%

3,113

3,000

18%

13%

2,187 2,000

1,673

1,000 0

5 1996

2000

2005

2009

2010

mean gre Quantitative Scores of new entrants in Doctoral Program

780

773

760

2005

2009

2010

number of PhD and mS Students

777

781

PhD MS

759

1,217

1,174

1,200 1,000

766

770

2000

1996

800

667

705

647

750

582

600

740 730

400

720

499

423 327

275

200

710 700

1996

2000

2005

2009

2010

1996

2000

2005

2009

2010 *

*projected columbia engineering | 43

164201013% 44318252010 168 SEAS BY THE NUMBERS

SeaS Faculty growth 1995â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2010

PhD Students per Faculty

200

168

164

150

115 100

4.07

4.2

2.82

2.39

3.88

1 0 1995

2000

2010

2009

2005

1996 2000 2005 2009 2010

research expenditures $120 Millions

$110,794K

$100 Millions

$92,937K

$80 Millions

$74,990K

$60 Millions

$39,581K

$40 Millions

$29,240K $20 Millions 0

44 | columbia engineering

1996

2000

2005

2008

2009

a new goal

150 150 by

s the 2010–2011 school year opens, the Columbia Engineering community is beginning to talk about plans for how the engineering family will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the founding of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In addition to high-profile lectures, alumni gatherings, and other events, Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora is also leading the engineering community in an effort to encourage unprecedented investment in our Engineering faculty, students, departments, and facilities. The dean has announced that planning is under way for Columbia Engineering to have raised $150 million by the end of 2014, the year of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the School of Mines at Columbia University. This effort builds on The Columbia Campaign, launched in 2006, which had raised more than $100 million for faculty, programs, students, and facilities in Engineering as of July 1, 2010. The 150 by 150 effort would extend the School of Engineering’s original campaign goal of raising $125 million by the end of 2011. Remarkably, in the last twelve months alone, the School of Engineering has successfully raised more than $25 million for endowed faculty positions, despite the continuing sluggishness of the global economy. “Many alumni are in a process of winnowing down the number of causes they are choosing to support in this economy,” said Associate Dean for Advancement Peggy Maher. “So the trend we are witnessing demonstrates that our alumni believe the School of Engineering and Applied Science is a truly essential institution worthy of their continued investment. This seems especially true as all sectors of our economy become increasingly reliant on technically proficient leaders and managers.” Based on this track record of success, Dean Peña-Mora believes The Columbia Campaign for Engineering could achieve an ambitious target of raising $150 million by the end of 2014 in order to mark the sesquicentennial anniversary of the School. To maximize the impact of this initiative, the dean has targeted student-centered needs as the focus for this phase of the campaign for engineering. “We seek to educate the Columbia Engineering students in our classrooms today to become the leaders in their fields for the next generation,” said Dean Peña-Mora. “So I am proposing that we set our sights on investing in them by committing to raise $50 million for student support and programs over the next three years. In this way, we can say that Columbia Engineering will achieve ‘150 by 150’ to consolidate our strengths and ensure another century and a half of engineering excellence.” This proposed plan comes at a time of growing momentum at Columbia. Overall, through The Columbia Campaign, donors have given more than $3.7 billion to date for students, faculty, and programs across the University.

$150M $120M $90M

Target Actual

$60M $30M 0

FY’05

FY’06 FY’07

FY’08

FY’09

FY’10

FY’11 2011* 2014* * end of calendar year columbia engineering | 45

Columbia Engineering Around the World

s part of the university’s global initiatives effort and in recognition of the important role that alumni and friends from asia have played in the history of columbia, engineering Dean Feniosky Peña-mora, columbia college Dean michele moody-adams, and other senior administrators from columbia visited asia in June for a series of alumni, parent, and student gatherings. receptions were held in Hong Kong, Seoul, and bangkok bringing together over 450 columbians to meet the Dean on his first official visit to asia. The incoming undergraduate students in each city were also officially welcomed to the columbia family.

Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora, third from right, was an invited presenter at the FUNGLODE Symposium on disaster preparedness conducted this summer in the Dominican Republic. The dean, whose expertise is in managing large-scale projects and disaster management, spoke to more than 100 engineering professionals and government officials on ways to train, deploy, and utilize first responders as well as manage the disaster recovery cycle, including damage assessment, restoration of services, and temporary shelter. Shown in the photo above are, from l. to r., Federico Cuello, Permanent Ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the United Nations; Valerie Julliand, United Nations Representative to the Dominican Republic; Dean Peña-Mora; and Marco Herrera, Executive Director of Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (FUNGLODE), an organization founded by Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández.

46 | columbia engineering

Chatchai Piyasombatkul ’86, P’11, ’13, a member of the School’s Board of Visitors, left, joined Dean Peña-Mora, center, and Prime Minister of Thailand Abhisit Vejjajiva in the Government House in Bangkok to discuss educational partnerships between Columbia Engineering and Thailand. Prime Minister Vejjajiva presented Dean Peña-Mora with a depiction of the royal barge as a memento to mark the occasion of their meeting.

Regina and John Lee ’81, right, parents of Andrew Lee ’13, left, met the dean for lunch in Seoul, South Korea, and also attended a dinner for parents of current Engineering students.

There were many highlights on the trip. in china, the dean stopped in beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou to discuss international research collaborations with top universities and corporations. in bangkok, he met with The Prime minster of Thailand to explore educational partnerships between columbia engineering and Thailand. in Shanghai, Donglei Zhou ’00 hosted a dinner for chinese alumni who were Fu Foundation Scholars. in Seoul, Parents council member Seung Hoon lee and Sun Kee chung P’13 hosted a dinner for parents of current students, where Dean Peña-mora spoke of the need to increase the connection of international parents.

Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora, center, joined Columbia Professor of Chemical Engineering Jingyue Ju, right, and Jing Cheng, left, a research partner at Tsinghua University in Beijing, outside the lab where they are engaged in collaborative research. Professor Ju, the principal investigator, is also head of DNA sequencing and chemical biology at the Judith P. Sulzberger, M.D. Columbia Genome Center. He is a leader in the global race to develop the $1,000 genome platform for personalized medicine.

The Debian Project, an organization which is behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system (Debian, for short), held its 11th international conference at Columbia in August in cooperation with the Department of Computer Science. It marks the first time the conference has been held in the U.S., and it was attended by more than 300 software developers from around the world. (The tartan seen in the kilts and ties is “Debian,” a unique plaid contained in the Scottish Tartan World Registry.) Photo by Aigars Manhinovs

columbia engineering | 47

Commencement and Class Day

Commencement Class Day more than 40,000 people braved pouring rain on may 18, 2010, to attend the 256th commencement of columbia university. President bollinger’s announcement that he was exercising his executive power to cut short the ceremony was met with enthusiastic applause. citing an old saying that rain on commencement guarantees a fabulous life, the president joked that this and a columbia degree “should be guarantee enough.” He still took the opportunity to remind the new graduates of their legacy as columbians, and their duty to lead public discourse and reject intolerance.

in contrast to the rain of commencement, the SeaS class Day on may 16, 2010, enjoyed beautiful weather. alumnus and Professor emeritus Paul brandt-rauf gave the keynote speech and congratulated family members, faculty, and the graduating class. Dean of the School of Public Health at the university of illinois at chicago, Dr. brandt-rauf described his personal journey from engineering to public health while collecting “lots of degrees”: he holds the bS, mS, and engScD in chemical engineering from SeaS; and the mD, mPH, and DrPH from the medical center.

Dean Feniosky Peña-mora, representing the Faculty of The Fu Foundation School of engineering and applied Science for his first columbia commencement, praised the candidates for degrees as “socially responsible engineering and applied science leaders whose work will result in the betterment of the human condition, locally, nationally, and globally.” He noted that they continue to fulfill one of the original missions of Kings college in 1754: to provide “everything useful for the comfort, the convenience and the elegance of life.”

However, Dr. brandt-rauf added, “i still use much of what i learned here in engineering every day. That’s because much of the improvement in the health of the public has been achieved and is still being achieved through engineering solutions.” He cited the example of george Soper, an 1899 PhD graduate of the Henry Krumb School of mines at columbia, who worked on the Typhoid mary epidemic in new York city in 1907 and was instrumental in combining engineering and medical knowledge into the new discipline of public health. “So engineering and public health

48 | columbia engineering

have a long shared history and are actually intimately connected in that both disciplines work to build a better world,” said Dr. brandt-rauf. a member of the national board of directors of engineers Without borders, Dr. brandt-rauf emphasized the need to consider “engineering as a profession and the engineer as an agent of social justice.” citing albert einstein, he argued that a “new level of thinking” is required to solve the problems caused by our technologically advanced society. “This old level of thinking has made a world that is profoundly technologically efficient in a way that is equally profoundly unjust and unsustainable,” said Dr. brandt-rauf. engineers, who have specialized skills in problem-solving, he suggests, should lead the way. Professional responsibility, he concluded, “is not just about knowing but about caring.” Dean Peña-mora presented three awards to celebrate outstanding faculty members. latha Venkataraman, assistant professor of applied Physics and applied mathematics, received the Kim award for Faculty involvement. established in 2000 by edward and carole Kim, this award honors a faculty member who is not only an excellent teacher but also shows a special, personal commitment to students. Dean Peña-mora

praised Professor Venkataraman’s role in student lives as a supporter, adviser, and mentor. Souleymane Kachani, associate professor of industrial engineering and operations research, received the 2010 Janette and armen avanessians Diversity award. The School instituted this award to recognize those faculty members who encourage women and men from diverse backgrounds to become part of the academic community of engineering education. university Trustee and board of Visitors chair emeritus armen avanessians, and his wife Janette, created an endowment to fund this award in perpetuity. The third faculty award, The rodriguez Family Junior Faculty Development award, was given to elon Terrell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering. This award was established by two alumni, ana rodriguez ’86, ’88, and her brother, marcos rodriguez ’83, to support the advancement of junior faculty in our School. Professor Terrell is pursuing research interests in the field of thermal-fluid sciences, focusing on hydrodynamic lubrication, surface engineering, and contact mechanics as applied to memS devices, energy systems, biomedical devices, and sustainable manufacturing.

alumnus Daniel Schiavello ’75, ’76, president of the columbia engineering alumni association, presented Distinguished Faculty Teaching awards to rocco a. Servedio and Yannis P. Tsividis. Professor Servedio, an associate professor of computer science, specializes in theoretical computer science, particularly computational learning theory and computational complexity theory. Professor Tsividis is the charles batchelor Professor of electrical engineering and is a previous recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Teaching award. He and his students are responsible for such innovations as precision device modeling and novel circuit building blocks, new techniques for analog and mixed-signal processing, self-correcting chips, and switched-capacitor network theory. Valedictorian Seth Davidovits, winner of the illig medal, added a light note to the celebrations by joking that the world would end in the year 2012. He reminded his class to “take time to smell the flowers, make sure your loved ones know how you feel about them, pursue your dreams with the vigor of someone who knows there’s not a minute to lose.” He recommended that they should value what they have in themselves: “the skills, knowledge, and friendships we have gained these past four years through our

columbia education.” His final words of advice were, “don’t worry too much about mistakes and failures.” after all, he concluded, “compared to me, you’re golden —i just publicly predicted the end of the world in two years.” Salutatorian rodney chang received the William a. Hadley award in mechanical engineering for character, scholarship, and service. He likened columbia to the new York city subways: “it provides an infinite number of places to take our academic, economic, and social lives. it’s a great crossroads, but … there is no lack of guidance.” other students honored with awards included: Sara Yee, Scholar athlete award; austin brauser, the george Vincent Wendell memorial medal; and Heather lee, Student activities award. campus life leadership awards were presented to Frances Jeffrey-coker, Sherwin David Shahraray, and Jack Yuan. Whitney green, outgoing president of the engineering Student council, received both the charles Kandel medal and the costantino colombo outstanding leadership Service award. Stephanie Hwang was awarded the Thomas “Pop” Harrington medal.

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Welcoming New Students and Faculty

he beginning of the new academic year brought a new entering class of eager and exuberant students who were each welcomed by Dean Feniosky Peña-mora with a handshake and a beanie proclaiming them members of the class of 2014, the School’s 150th anniversary class. The beanie tradition was reinstituted last year and is now a new tradition for each incoming class. This year’s beanie was designed by a member of last year’s entering class, Tim Qin ’13. The dean also welcomed five new junior faculty members. Shown here with the dean are, from l. to r., assistant Professors Van ahn Truong, ieor; Xi chen, computer Science; Vanessa ortiz, chemical engineering; Dean Peña-mora; Kristin myer, mechanical engineering; and Vineet goyal, ieor.

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Armen Avanessians

Giving Back: Armen Avanessians MS ’83 IEOR

The Family of Samuel Y. Sheng

MA ’51 Industrial Chemistry

Samuel Y. Sheng

A Tradition of Giving: Columbia Engineering Families Come Together to Create a Lasting Legacy A University Trustee, Chair of the Columbia Campaign for Engineering, and longtime donor of Columbia University, Armen Avanessians ’83 has played an integral part in Columbia Engineering’s growth over the past decade. In 2000, Armen and his wife, Janette, endowed a professorship in honor of Armen’s parents, Alexander ’62 and Hermine. The Alexander and Hermine Avanessians Chair supports exceptional faculty in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, and is currently held by Donald Goldfarb, a leading researcher in the fields of program algorithms, network flow, and machine learning. In October 2009, Dean Feniosky Peña-Mora announced that the School would augment current efforts by raising $30 million to enable the recruitment and retention of promising new faculty members who will ultimately do their best work at Columbia Engineering. Recognizing the potential impact of this ambitious plan, Armen created a fund which provided a 1:1 match for major gifts to support endowed chairs and professorships in engineering. Through this match, Armen and his family amplified the awareness of Columbia Engineering faculty as the heart of this world-class engineering school. Armen sees himself “helping Columbia Engineering take a significant step forward to fulfill its potential as one of the world’s leading engineering institutions.” This unprecedented challenge from the Avanessians family sparked an enthusiastic response from alumni families to join in supporting faculty endowment. In one outstanding example, the family of Samuel Y. Sheng ’51 stepped up by establishing a professorship in his memory. A graduate of Columbia’s master’s program in industrial chemistry, Samuel Sheng enjoyed a long and successful career in the chemical engineering industry. Strong in philanthropy, Mr. Sheng generously supported ophthalmology research and undergraduate financial aid at Columbia University. A Samuel Y. Sheng scholarship established at Columbia Engineering in 2007 provides financial support to talented students who would otherwise forego a Columbia education. To honor him and his commitment to Columbia Engineering, Mr. Sheng’s daughter Jean, son Kent, and daughter-in-law Lauren ’76 established the Samuel Y. Sheng Professorship to support talented faculty pursuing research in the fast-developing field of biomedical engineering. “We wanted to honor our father in a meaningful way while supporting an institution that has had such a significant impact in people’s lives,” say Jean and Kent. “Armen’s generous match made this effort to attract and support faculty talent even more rewarding,” adds Lauren Wong Sheng, a member of the School’s Board of Visitors. Donor-funded professorships represent an extraordinary commitment to Columbia Engineering. In honoring their parents, the Avanessians and Sheng families have ensured their dedication to academic excellence and exceptional faculty achievement will leave a lasting legacy at the School of Engineering and Applied Science.