Texas A&M Engineer 2011

ENGINEERING RESEARCH AT TEX AS A&M UNIVERSITY

PORT SECURITY

Helping to increase the chance of detecting smuggled nuclear materials at U.S. ports and borders

THE ANTENNA ARTIST

The future of antenna technology

ULTRASOUND ELASTOGRAPHY

A new twist on an old technology to help doctors diagnose cancer earlier

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF MRI

Imaging to determine whether a cancer patient is responding to treatment

2011

From the

Dean’s Desk

With great pride, I present this edition of Texas A&M Engineer, which provides a snapshot of the high-impact research our faculty and students are conducting.

As of Aug. 31, I have completed two four-year terms as vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M University’s Dwight Look College of Engineering.

During this time, we have experienced tremendous growth with the addition of 112 new faculty reinvestment positions.

We have completed construction of 212,000 square feet of new space for our $104 million Emerging Technologies Building.

We have successfully established four undergraduate engineering degree programs and secured $100 million in research grants at our branch campus in Doha, Qatar.

At $137.5 million in research expenditures, we have reached a record high in research productivity.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my service to Texas A&M Engineering and step down knowing that our program is on a trajectory for continued growth and excellence.

I truly believe the best years for Texas A&M Engineering lie before us.

G. Kemble Bennett, Ph.D., P.E.

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Features

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8 14 18 20 28 34 38 42 48 52 A DIFFERENT KIND OF COAST GUARD 58 ZERO TOUCH

A new multifinger sensing technology

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF MRI

Imaging to determine whether a cancer patient is responding to treatment

AERO’S SPACE

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World-class aerospace engineering facilities

JOHN JUNKINS: SPACE JUNKIE MODEL ENGINEERS

Striving to minimize the guesswork involved in oil production

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ULTRASOUND ELASTOGRAPHY

A new twist on an old technology to help doctors diagnose cancer earlier

THE ANTENNA ARTIST

The future of antenna technology

KUMBAKONAM RAJAGOPAL Luminary in continuum mechanics

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KEEPING AN EYE ON THE GREEN SLIME OF BIOFUELS

Optical-electronic sensor allows management of algae lipid production for biofuels

PORT SECURITY

Helping to increase the chance of detecting smuggled nuclear materials at U.S. ports and borders

Why students, agencies and businesses are turning to Texas A&M’s Haynes Coastal Engineering Lab for education…and answers

58 64

74

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64 68 74 78 82 87 92 94 96 104 106

DOLLARS AND SENSE

Research-driven consortium aims to attract manufacturing to border region, ease trade between Mexico and the U.S.

NEXT-GENERATION 9-1-1

Developing and testing the next generation of emergency communications systems

SEPARATION TECHNOLOGY

Novel nanostubble separates desirable from undesirable

SYSTEMS APPROACH TO NUCLEAR ENERGY

Taking a holistic view to help shape the next-generation nuclear power plant

ENGINEERING QATAR’S KNOWLEDGE-BASED ECONOMY STUDENT NEWS LEADERSHIP FACULTY FACULTY AWARDS & HONORS CHAIRS & PROFESSORSHIPS RESEARCH FACTS

ENGINEERING RESEARCH AT TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

2011

VICE CHANCELLOR AND DEAN OF ENGINEERING

G. Kemble Bennett, Ph.D., P.E. ASSISTANT VICE CHANCELLOR FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Marilyn M. Martell

ENGINEERING RESEARCH AT TEX AS A&M UNIVERSIT Y

2011

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS

Pamela S. Green EDITORIAL

Robert Burns Gene Charleton Richard Cunningham Rebekah Elliott Ryan Garcia Lesley Kriewald Dedra Nevill Tony Okonski Tim Schnettler Kara Bounds Socol Deana Totzke Gabe Waggoner

PORT SECURITY

Helping to increase the chance of detecting smuggled nuclear materials at U.S. ports and borders

THE ANTENNA ARTIST

The future of antenna technology

ULTRASOUND ELASTOGRAPHY

A new twist on an old technology to help doctors diagnose cancer earlier

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF MRI

Imaging to determine whether a cancer patient is responding to treatment

ON THE COVER ZeroTouch is a virtual in-the-air touchpad computer interface that allows users to literally draw pictures in midair.

More on page 8.

ART DIRECTION

Matt Zeringue GRAPHIC DESIGN

Charlie Apel Audrey Guidry ONLINE & INTERACTIVE DESIGN

Donald St. Martin PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION

Christina Mitchell Jennifer Olivarez

Texas A&M Engineer is published by Engineering Communications in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University to inform readers about faculty research activities. This issue was published in September 2011.

Opinions expressed in Texas A&M Engineer are those of the author or editor and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Texas A&M University administration or The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents.

Media representatives: Permission is granted to use all or part of any article published in this magazine. Appropriate credit and a tearsheet are requested.

Contact us: Editor, Texas A&M Engineer Texas A&M Engineering Communications 3134 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-3134

engineeringmagazine.tamu.edu engineeringmagazine@tamu.edu Not printed at state expense.

EC11_1477 9/11 5M

CELEBRATING C++

25 years and beyond

Texas A&M is proud to have on faculty Bjarne Stroustrup — creator of the C++ programming language — ­ as a Distinguished Professor and the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science, where he is educating the next generation of computer scientists and engineers.

C++, now the most widely used programming language, is used for everyday applications, such as Internet browsers and cell phones, as well as for scientific applications, such as the NASA Mars Rovers and the Human Genome Project. Stroustrup’s book, The C++ Programming Language, is the most widely read book about the subject and has been translated into more than 19 languages.

And now C++11, the next iteration of the C++ programming language, has passed review by the International Organization for Standardization, allowing programmers to use C++ on essentially all computers and from every implementation provider.

His most recent book, Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ (released in December 2008, pictured right), was written for and is being used by engineering freshmen. It has already been translated into seven languages.

To learn more about C++ and to view video interviews with Stroustrup, visit http://goo.gl/cVDQp.

Photo © Scott Goldsmith

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A New MultiFinger Sensing Technology

by Tony okonski It appears to be an empty frame, but it is filled with futuristic possibilities for the computer user with just the touch of a finger.

Created by researchers at the Interface Ecology Lab (IEL) in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, ZeroTouch is a virtual in-the-air touchpad computer interface that allows users to literally draw pictures in midair. The technology also allows the user to convert any conventional display, such as big-screen TVs, into an affordable touchscreen panel, opening a world of possibilities for precision gaming, designing and other experiences that rely on touch technology.

“ZeroTouch is an input device, a multifinger sensor,” says Jon Moeller, a graduate student and ZeroTouch co-designer. “It is basically a thin plane of interaction built with a linear array of infrared-sensing component. Any object within that plane can be detected and recorded. It can transform any computer monitor or even free space into a multitouch interface.”

Moeller is a member of the IEL under the direction of Associate Professor Andruid Kerne. Under Kerne’s guidance, IEL researchers develop human-centered computing by taking an interface-ecosystems approach.

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As an object enters the plane of the ZeroTouch, a visual representation of the object’s size, shape and position within the frame is displayed in real time on a device such as a computer monitor or television.

Touch-sensitive frames have enabled interactive surfaces for years, but the size and responsiveness tend to be limited.

Enter ZeroTouch, with precise sensing within a specific plane of interaction.

“The ecosystems approach encounters and develops the interface as a multidimensional border zone between people, technologies, languages, analog, digital, cyber, organic, culture and other representational systems as a basis for engaging in human-centered computing,” Kerne says. “We must incorporate the diverse methodologies that inhabit and characterize the interface border zone in order to discover new natural and meaningful forms of human–computer interaction.”

The development of integrated hardware– software systems for embodied interaction spans diverse fields, including algorithms, electronics, embedded systems, physics, art and cognition. In his research, Kerne draws from his experience developing embedded computer systems for NASA’s Mars Pathfinder, as well as his background in human–computer interaction, music composition, multimedia performance and culture.

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ZeroTouch 101

Touch-sensitive frames have enabled interactive surfaces for years, but the size and responsiveness tend to be limited. Enter ZeroTouch, with precise sensing within a specific plane of interaction.

“We constructed a frame, and around the periphery we embedded low-cost infrared emitters and sensors to quickly determine intersections within the frame,” Moeller says.

“ZeroTouch enables real-time sensing of fingers and hands, even in the presence of strong ambient light. Our technology allows for many interactions to be detected, many more than typical multitouch techniques. Our use of wide-angle optoelectronics allows for excellent touch resolution, even in the corners of the sensor.”

A 27-inch ZeroTouch frame has “smart” edges embedded with 256 infrared sensors and 32 LEDs that each blink about 2,400 times per second, detecting whatever moves around inside it. Fingertips, hands, arms and even inanimate objects pass through an invisible two-dimensional optical web that tracks them.

This ZeroTouch sensor has been integrated not only with 1080 pixel displays but also with higher-resolution 1440 pixel, nearing twice ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Kerne demonstrates how ZeroTouch can be used as an input device in a “paint” program and how the palette can be manipulated via an iPhone.

Dr. Andruid Kerne

as many pixels. This configuration turns a traditional monitor into a low-cost multitouch surface, supporting direction interaction with multiple fingers and hands at one time — much larger and more responsive than an iPad. ZeroTouch can also be integrated with high-resolution stylus-based tablet computing displays to enable pen-plus-hand interaction. The researchers’ initial applications address real-time strategy games and art-exhibit curation.

The frame is connected to a computer with USB, which provides power and collects the data. Capable of recognizing up to 20 independent touch points at a time, the sensor not only recognizes that an object has entered the plane but also registers its size.

Look, Ma, no hands!

The ZeroTouch sensor can be suspended in free air, enabling precise gestural interaction similar to that seen in the movie Minority Report, in which characters viewed computer screens midair and scrolled through content on the monitor with the touch of a finger.

With the addition of the intangibleCanvas application, users can paint on a virtual canvas by gesturing in midair by simply moving a

hand across the ZeroTouch plane. The colors are controlled using an iPhone, and the thickness of the brush is controlled by how much enters the frame. If it’s just a finger, the brush will be narrow. But the use of an entire arm will make a wider brushstroke.

Computer Science & Engineering Associate Professor 979.862.3217 andruid@cse.tamu.edu

IEL collaborator Ziegelbaum-Coelho recently developed a free-air interactive kiosk. The Cartier brand used this kiosk to create an innovative interface for browsing promotional videos about their luxuriant watches for an event organized by Fast Company, honoring the 100 most creative people in business.

One big advantage to ZeroTouch, the researchers say, is its affordability. The research prototype was made using commercially available sensors usually found in TV remote controls. Moeller says that the frame, which wasn’t designed for mass production, cost about $450 to construct.

ZeroTouch has many potential applications, such as a training guide for surgeons that can track their fine hand movements, as well as for interactive instructions on how to construct and repair complicated machinery.

Jon Moeller

Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Student mole2k4@tamu.edu

Moeller says the technology creates more possibilities for interaction than those interfaces 11

Moeller demonstrates how the ZeroTouch frame, which has been mounted to an ordinary display, transforms the monitor into a multitouch interface, allowing for manipulation with fingers or, for greater precision, a stylus.

that rely on capacitive sensors, such as touchscreens on smartphones and laptops. The ZeroTouch technology simply requires the user to break the light beams; activating the sensor doesn’t require any force.

“I was extremely glad that the students got the gratification of being recognized by famous researchers at the conference and in the media for their ingenuity, dedication and perseverance. It’s a clear demonstration of how transformative synergy can result from innovative combinations of research and education.”

“You can use it with gloves on,” Moeller says.

“So it can be used in hazardous environments where capacitive interfaces would be unsuitable.”

Next, the team plans to work on scaling the technology up to larger 2-D arrays, and to three dimensions, Kerne says. The researchers will experiment to explore the transformative potential for interactive experiences through stacking layers of the frames.

“One of the cool things about ZeroTouch is you can stack layers together to achieve depth sensing,” Kerne says.

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Education through research

ZeroTouch creators demonstrated the technology during the 2011 Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) held in Canada and generated significant media attention, including the Today Show, Time, Discovery News, Popular Science, PC World and New Scientist.

Students in Kerne’s graduate seminar in human–computer interaction developed the CHI ZeroTouch exhibit. Kerne says he was excited and gratified that the lab received the accolades, and he was thrilled that students could contribute to the project and be recognized for their hard work.

“The recognition we garnered for ZeroTouch resulted from a kismet combining the inherent qualities of the high-resolution multifinger sensing and the applications we exhibited to seed people’s imaginations,” he says. “These resulted directly from the great work that students performed in class prior to the conference.

“I was extremely glad that the students got the gratification of being recognized by famous researchers at the conference and in the media for their ingenuity, dedication and perseverance. It’s a clear demonstration of how transformative synergy can result from innovative combinations of research and education.” O

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

cse.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

1,003 Students (Fall 2010)

Core Research Areas

655 Undergraduate 348 Graduate

• Foundations of computing

U.S. News & World Report Rankings

• Information

14 Graduate, Computer Engineering

• Intelligent systems and robotics

(among public institutions)

46 Faculty

14 Professors 12 Associate professors 10 Assistant professors 10 Nontenured/non–tenure track

1 National Academy of Engineering Member 5 Endowed Positions

1 Chair 4 Professorships

$12 Million Overall Budget 51 percent — research

• Human-centered systems

• Software • Software engineering • Systems

Multidisciplinary Systems • Bioinformatics • Brain networks • Computational science • Humanities informatics • Security

Pushing the Boundaries of

MRI

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by Tim Schnettler

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE.TAM .TAMU U.EDU .EDU

Mary McDougall and grad student Joseph Rispoli work with a prototype RF coil designed to collect the spectroscopic information from breast tissue during an MRI of patients with breast cancer. The coil will detect hydrogen and carbon-13 nuclei.

Imaging to determine whether a cancer patient is responding to treatment Some believe that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has reached its limits and there is nowhere else for it to go. Then there are those like Texas A&M University assistant professor of biomedical engineering Mary McDougall, who is working to push MRI beyond its current state.

“Because MRI is already used by doctors, it is a common misconception that it is a ‘fully cooked’ diagnostic tool,” McDougall says. “In fact, research in MRI is incredibly active and dynamic, and much of that has to do with innovations in hardware and methodology that will ultimately help us diagnose and treat disease differently.”

McDougall, who earned her bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M in electrical engineering and her master’s from Johns Hopkins, returned to Texas A&M and focused her doctoral research on biomedical imaging and MRI, earning her Ph.D. in electrical engineering. McDougall, along with her colleagues, is in the midst of two research projects, in collaboration with clinical sites, aimed at taking MRI to the next level.

One study involves using a 3-Tesla (3T) magnet, whereas the other uses an even more powerful 7T magnet. These are large superconducting magnets that produce these field strengths. To grasp just how massive the superconducting magnets are, compare them to Earth’s magnetic field, which at 0.00005T seems minuscule.

“Research in MRI is incredibly active and dynamic, and much of that has to do with innovations in hardware and methodology that will ultimately help us diagnose and treat disease differently.”

“We have largely focused the work in our lab on highly accelerated imaging, giving us the ability to see dynamics with MRI that were not previously possible,” McDougall says. “Our clinical collaborations have the same goal: taking MRI beyond what is conventional.”

Scanning at 7T

One project McDougall is working on, with researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, involves using a 7T magnet, the highest field strength available for clinical research. Most MRI units in hospitals are 1.5T, but manufacturers are making whole-body scanners at 7T strength and providing support, and UT Southwestern is currently home to the only 7T clinical MRI scanner in Texas.

Dr. Mary P. McDougall Biomedical Engineering

“It is such a new ‘toy’ that it is really interesting to us,” McDougall says of the 7T magnet.

Assistant Professor 979.845.2421 mpmcdougall@tamu.edu

Sponsored by the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, the project focuses on multinuclear spectroscopy and imaging 15

The breast coil on the left is being used in the study currently ongoing at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas using the 7T magnet. The MRI images on the right are some of the first acquired at 7T using the RF technology developed at Texas A&M. The higher field strength allows more detail to be seen than the field strengths currently being used in clinics.

and is being conducted primarily on breast cancer patients. The project’s goal is to reduce the time to determine whether a patient is responding to cancer treatment.

“It is a very exciting project,” McDougall says.

“Currently using MRI, you take an image, the woman goes off and gets her treatment for a period of time and then she comes back. Then you take another image to see if the tumor has shrunk. That is the modus operandi right now, to judge response to treatment, and it is really slow.

“We have largely focused the work in our lab on highly accelerated imaging, giving us the ability to see dynamics with MRI that were not previously possible. Our clinical collaborations have the same goal: taking MRI beyond what is conventional.”

“The ideal scenario that you would envision instead would be that she gets treatment, and within hours you would know whether or not she is responding positively by receiving spectroscopic information from that tumor.

From that spectroscopic signature, you can gain knowledge about the sensitive chemical content of the tumor, which will change in response to treatment long before you could see a change in the size of the tumor.

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“The real feasibility of this is just now being made possible with the signal provided by the higher-field-strength magnet.”

Though now focused on breast cancer patients, this work, if successful, could be used with other forms of cancer as well.

“100 percent, yes, it can be applied to other areas if it were to work,” McDougall says.

Benefits and challenges

Higher field strength yields greater signal, in turn offering a host of advantages to the field of MRI. Among them is the possibility of increasing a scan’s spatial or temporal resolution, or giving medical researchers and professionals better chemical information.

Despite these enormous advantages, higher field strength — particularly 7T — also has some challenges. Although these drawbacks are limiting the potential of what appears to be a powerful new tool in the realm of MRI, researchers are working to overcome these obstacles.

“It is becoming apparent that addressing these challenges is going to require research and development on the hardware and methodology side in large part,” McDougall says. “We are developing specialized RF [radiofrequency] technology to help mitigate the challenges of working at 7T in order to get better images and spectroscopic information.” O

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

biomed.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

532 Students (Fall 2010)

• Biomaterials

444 Undergraduate

• Biomechanics

88 Graduate

U.S. News & World Report Rankings (among public institutions)

• Biomedical electronics and instrumentation • Biomedical imaging • Biomedical signal processing

18 Graduate

• Biophotonics

20 Faculty

• Computational mechanics

2 Professors

• Computer simulation of biomolecules

8 Associate professors

• Constitutive modeling

5 Assistant professors

• Magnetic resonance imaging

5 Nontenured/non–tenure track

• Nano and micro biosensing and imaging

2 Endowed Positions 2 Professorships

$5 Million in Research Expenditures

• Cardiac, vascular and cellular mechanics

• Nonlinear optical microscopy • Nonlinear solid mechanics • Optical diagnostics • Optical imaging • Optical sensing • Orthopedic rehabilitation engineering • Polymer colloids and hydrogels • Soft tissue biomechanics • Tissue engineering

Aero’s spAce World-class aerospace engineering facilities

By Rebekah Elliott

W

hether it’s shaving fractions of a second off a Formula One car’s lap time, squeezing more power out of the next green-energy wind turbine or improving the efficiency of tomorrow’s high-endurance and high-speed air vehicles, Texas A&M aerospace engineering research has expanded into one of the nation’s most diverse integrated experimental aerodynamics facilities.

The Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M has a long history dating back to the first aeronautical graduates in 1942. But it is the program’s recent period of rapid growth that is garnering attention, including the addition of research aircraft and several wind tunnels that provide speeds ranging from 80 mph to more than Mach 6.

“Any one of the testing facilities we operate would be the jewel in another department’s crown,” says Associate Professor Ed White.

“That we have so many and that they operate in an integrated way with so many students

and professors puts Texas A&M’s aerospace engineering department miles ahead of any other department in the country. We operate almost at the level of a mini–national laboratory.”

Much of the recent growth in experimental facilities began with a faculty reinvestment program at Texas A&M that brought several prominent researchers to the department, including Professor William Saric, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a distinguished expert in boundary-layer stability and transition.

Faculty and student researchers and industry alike benefit from having in one location flight-testing facilities with subsonic, supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnel facilities, each with its own specialty. In addition, five smaller academic and research wind tunnels are operating in the H.R. Bright Building on Texas A&M’s main campus. O

National Aerothermochemistry Laboratory at Texas A&M University

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The Facilities at a Glance 1 The Klebanoff-Saric Wind Tunnel is one of only a few low-speed, low-disturbance wind tunnels in the world. It can generate test section speeds of up to 70 mph with very low turbulence intensities over the full speed range of the tunnel, making it an ideal platform for boundary-layer stability and transition experiments.

2 The Oran W. Nicks Low Speed Wind Tunnel offers low-speed wind tunnel testing for both academic and commercial users for test engineering, model fabrication and data analysis.

With a large test section measuring 7 feet by 10 feet and flow velocities up to 200 mph, the wind tunnel is a versatile platform for testing a wide variety of models from aircraft to missiles, racing bicycles, semi trucks, wind turbines, offshore oil platforms and more.

3 The Flight Research Laboratory operates two aircraft as flying wind tunnels, where researchers study the transition process on specially designed test models mounted to the aircraft and flown under real-world flight conditions.

A Cessna Skymaster is the workhorse of the laboratory, with its dual-engine configuration and external stores pylons for the heavy lifting of test models, instrumentation, two flight crews, and a graduate student flight test engineer. A high-performance motor glider offers ultra quiet flight without engine noise for the purest flight test environment.

Research is funded through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

4 The Mach 6 Quiet Tunnel, originally part of NASA Langley Research Center, is one of only two wind tunnels in the world that can support fundamental research into

boundary-layer stability at hypersonic speeds in a low-disturbance environment. Research is supported by the Texas A&M–led National Center for Hypersonic Laminar-Turbulent Transition Research. This five-year program, funded by AFOSR and NASA, integrates the efforts of four universities to enhance the fundamental understanding of the hypersonic transition process and its dependence on chemical reactions, ablation, surface roughness and more.

5 The National Aerothermochemistry Laboratory is home to several high-speed wind tunnel facilities. The Supersonic High-Reynolds Number (SHR) tunnel is a small-scale supersonic tunnel that enables fundamental research into the effects of roughness on the turbulent boundary layers on vehicles at speeds of Mach 2, 3 or 5. The Adaptively Controlled Expansion Tunnel is a larger hypersonic facility that operates interchangeably with the Mach 6 Quiet Tunnel and offers speeds of Mach 5–8.

6 The Land Air and Space Robotics (LASR) Lab conducts research in robotic sensing and control with an aim to enhance the fields of proximity operations, human–robot interaction, stereo vision, swarm robotics and autonomous aerial vehicles. The indoor robotics arena is the centerpiece of the lab, offering 2,000 square feet of flat floor for ground robots. Twelve-foot ceilings give aerial vehicles plenty of room to maneuver. Project funding comes from AFRL, the U.S. government, NASA and Boeing Co.

Dr. Edward White

Aerospace Engineering Associate Professor 979.862.6446 ebw@tamu.edu

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Texas A&M aerospace engineering professor John Junkins fancies himself an inventor and is working to develop a new video camera that provides three-dimensional artificial vision that would aid in the efforts to clear “space junk� objects that are floating around in space near Earth.

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By Tim Schnettler

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Junkins and first-year graduate student Andrei Kolmenski discuss the 1:10 scale model of the Hubble Telescope. The telescope sits atop the Holonomic Omnidirectional Motion Emulation Robot (HOMER), which is used to simulate spacecraft.

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n the realm of aerospace engineering, the name John Junkins is one of notoriety.

From the rank of distinguished professor and regents professor at Texas A&M University to being a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Junkins’ reputation precedes him.

The kicker is that Junkins, who also holds the Royce E. Wisenbaker Chair in Engineering, almost didn’t end up in academics. Like many young men, Junkins had visions of being a standout on the football field. Growing up in the football-crazy state of Georgia helped fuel his passion for success on the gridiron.

“I was not a great high school student, but I knew I had potential,” Junkins says of his early years. “Also, in hindsight, I was an upper -mediocre athlete who was seriously overachieving already and likely would not have made it at the next level.

“However, in the social culture I grew up in, success in football was more important than being an exceptional student. I was not mature enough until my late teens to set myself on a proper course, and since I was destined to be the first Junkins male to finish college, I did not have great academic mentoring. I wasn’t taking the college-prep courses, especially to pursue a technical field.”

During his senior year of high school, Junkins says he was planning to play football, having been recruited by Clemson and Georgia Tech.

But that same year, 1961, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous speech about how the United States was going to land a man on the moon. Kennedy’s much-celebrated words caused Junkins to change his thinking.

Georgia Tech did not offer a scholarship, but Junkins was considering walking on there and trying to time-share studying engineering with football.

“That speech really caught my attention,” Junkins says. “I was tempted, the moment I heard Kennedy chart the Apollo course, to say, ‘To heck with football’ because I feel like I have the potential to play a role in this grand challenge.”

Tempted, but not completely convinced, Junkins still had his sights set on college football. Although the words of President Kennedy weren’t quite enough to sway him to make the final decision, the actions of his high school coach Crosslyn Clegg were.

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ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Graduate students (left to right) Dong Hoon Kim and Clark Moody work with Manoranjan Majji, a recent Ph.D. graduate, on the Holonomic Omnidirectional Motion Emulation Robot.

“I had a great man as my coach in high school who knew I shouldn’t be playing college football, but he didn’t just tell me to forget it,” Junkins says.

Instead, Clegg showed Junkins what he was in for if he decided to continue playing football on the collegiate level.

“He knew Coach Moore at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga,” Junkins says. “[Clegg] said, ‘Why don’t we go up there and observe spring practice; it will let you see what it is all about.’

“We went up there and I found out there were many guys that outweighed me by 40 pounds, who were not only stronger and faster than me, but playing football just consumed their life. It was intimidating, and the idea of timesharing serious academics seemed farfetched, especially since this was Division II level and I wanted to play at the Division I level.”

Driving home with Clegg, Junkins realized that football wasn’t the way he needed to go, and he informed Clegg of his decision.

“He said, ‘John, I have no idea what God’s plan is for you, but I know it has nothing to do with your body; it has everything to do with your mind,’” Junkins says. “And that was the turning point. Coach Clegg’s insightful mentoring made a deep impression on me, and it helped me throughout my career to become a more effective and benevolent mentor — helping students and younger colleagues to gain the first hand experience and

insight to make their own decisions. It also helped me appreciate that a person’s current state is not nearly as important as helping them get on the right path.”

“I very quickly saw that I enjoyed analysis and, especially, formulating mathematical models for physical systems at a conceptual level. I began to excel and gain momentum. I knew I had found my calling.”

With a new direction set, Junkins began to focus on academics. At the behest of his mother, who felt he needed to first grow up and learn how to study, Junkins attended Berry College, a four-year liberal arts college in Rome, Georgia, for his freshman year.

“I did that, and it turned out to be very smart. I learned how to study and made up for my lack of preparation,” Junkins says. “Then I transferred to Auburn University at the beginning of my sophomore year. I very quickly saw that I enjoyed analysis and, especially, formulating mathematical models for physical systems at a conceptual level. I began to excel and gain momentum. I knew I had found my calling.”

His labor of love paid off when Junkins earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Auburn. He followed that with a master’s and a Ph.D. in engineering, both from the University of California, Los Angeles.

He time-shared his UCLA graduate study with full-time work as an engineer at McDonnell

Dr. John L. Junkins

Aerospace Engineering Distinguished Professor Regents Professor Royce E. Wisenbaker Chair 979.845.3912 junkins@tamu.edu

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Douglas, where his work supported many launches of satellites aboard the Delta booster.

Upon graduating from UCLA, he accepted a faculty position at the University of Virginia in 1970. He moved to Virginia Tech in 1978 and eventually came to Texas A&M in 1985 as the first endowed chair holder in the College of Engineering.

Adding to his accomplishments

With a list of accomplishments such as those of Junkins, the temptation to sit back and enjoy “embroidery on concepts developed during the earlier decades of my career” could be great.

Junkins, however, has never been satisfied to engage in embroidery. At a time in his career, when most start looking toward retirement, Junkins picked up a new “hobby” — inventing.

“In addition to teaching and academic research, I started doing inventions around age 50,” Junkins says. “Elouise, my wife, said, ‘Some men in midlife lose their bearings and get off into dangerous territory where convertibles and younger women live. But not John Junkins: He got into electro-optics, and obviously, he made a very healthy choice!’”

Junkins got his first idea for an invention during a 1992 flight to Monterey, Calif., to begin a faculty development leave at the Naval Postgraduate School. While on the flight he was anxious to try out his latest purchase, an early handheld computer, which Junkins says was “large and clunky” and used a stylus for

handwritten input. After using it for a while, Junkins became frustrated with the poor functionality and felt that he had wasted his money on the purchase.

“One of the great challenges in front of the aerospace community is orbital debris.

We have 20,000 objects that we need to remove from Earth’s orbit. These things are like bullets up there and are dangerous to humans and expensive machines.”

“I came to the quick conclusion that this device with handwritten input was a good idea, but the hardware was terrible and the software was worse,” Junkins says. “I put it back in the box with smoke coming out of my ears because I was upset that I had spent $400 on it.”

So Junkins began trying to come up with a better concept for handwritten computer input, targeting the classroom of the future, and eventually patented a laser-scanning digitizing whiteboard. He recognized that laser tracking of a handheld stylus was just “a simplified, localized version of space navigation, analogous to tracking a satellite.” His invention led to a startup company and a successful prototype. However, others soon invented less expensive means of digitizing and the company eventually failed. Although this first invention did not make him rich, it did help usher in digital whiteboard technologies and pique his interest in being an inventor.

“While I did not make any money, I was hooked in the sense that I enjoyed the invention process because it used a different part of my brain than doing traditional academic engineering science research,” Junkins says.

Junkins speaks with Brent Macomber, a graduate student in aerospace engineering, about the HD3D camera that Junkins is developing. HD3D is a new type of video camera that will take an image of an object and precisely measure its three-dimensional geometry for each frame of video.

24

Junkins admits that he “accidentally stumbled” into being an inventor. He also admits to “having mediocre at best” success as an inventor, as measured by commercialization.

The key for him as a professor, however, is “his newfound way to integrate teaching, academic research and invention in the development of people.” He says his recent students are far better educated, and especially, more creative as a result. His Land, Air and Space Robotics (LASR) laboratory is a wonderful and exciting environment for educating engineers and scientists of the future. Also, he is now ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

In addition to his many accomplishments, Junkins has had 46 Ph.D. students graduate and has advised more than 100 graduate students, including current student Kurt Cavalieri. “Those are the things I pride myself in,” Junkins says.

working on an important new invention, a three-dimensional camera known as HD3D. He is especially excited because this invention is moving closer to becoming a reality.

His previous inventions have also led to several commercial products, including navigation sensors for autonomous aerial refueling of aircraft as well as for spacecraft navigation based on star pattern recognition.

Artificial vision

HD3D is a new type of camera that will take an image of an object and precisely measure its three-dimensional geometry for each frame of a “3-D” video. Junkins points out that the HD3D laser sensor can image at close range as well as, remarkably, up to distances many tens of miles in space. At sea level, local atmospheric conditions and eye safety dictate the practical range as several football fields from the camera to the imaged object.

“HD3D ladar is almost like an optical radar,” Junkins says. “The fact that this sensor can work over long distances, with appropriate laser power, and simultaneously capture geometry and texture gives it some unique features.”

Junkins’ invention would have applications in aerospace engineering and robotics by providing artificial 3-D vision. Such technology would be helpful not only in routine maneuvers of one satellite near another but also for clearing “space junk,” the thousands of objects that float dangerously in Earth orbit.

“One of the great challenges in front of the aerospace community is orbital debris,” Junkins says. “We have 20,000 objects that we need to remove from Earth’s orbit. Some are just derelict satellites, but most are fragments from several satellite collisions. Every collision leaves debris that makes subsequent collisions more likely. These things are like bullets up there and are dangerous to humans and expensive machines.

“If we want to have the equivalent of a butterfly net to grab hold of these things and capture them and drag them down and release them to burn up in the atmosphere, we have to track them and image them in three dimensions to see where they are, and what these poorly known objects look like.”

Enter HD3D

Laser ranging has existed for a long time.

Golfers have used it to measure the distance from their ball to the flag on the green.

Junkins’ invention, however, takes laser ranging a giant step further. His device allows imaging an entire scene rather than just one point and captures 3-D geometric details by using a small device that functions at the same speed as a video camera.

“It is an advanced laser-sensing technology that very quickly sweeps a pulsed laser beam over the field you want to image,” Junkins says. “Making 12 million measurements per second, it represents a two-order-of-magnitude speedup and with greatly increased precision.”

25

19 8 3

Mechanics and Control of Flight Award

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 19 84

Fellow

American Astronautics Society 19 8 5 – 19 8 9

Distinguished Chair

Texas Engineering Experiment Station 19 87

Fellow

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Dirk Brouwer Award

American Astronautical Society 19 8 8

John Leland Atwood Award

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and American Society for Engineering Education 19 9 0

G. Edward Pendray Aerospace Literature Award American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 19 91

Outstanding Aerospace Engineering Alumnus Auburn University College of Engineering 19 9 2

Distinguished Scientist Award Sigma Xi 19 9 6

Medal and Lectureship 19 9 8 –present

Distinguished Professor Texas A&M University 19 9 9

Frank J. Malina Award

International Astronautical Federation 2002

Regents Professor Texas A&M University 2003

Tycho Brahe Award Institute of Navigation 2 0 0 6 –present

Royce E. Wisenbaker Chair Dwight Look College of Engineering 2 0 07

Outstanding Alumnus Award UCLA

Advised more than 100 graduate students, with more than 45 completing their Ph.D.s

Member

More than 400 professional publications, including more than 125 archival journal papers, six books and several patents

Once operational, the camera will also help bring the “next generation” technology to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), which has been around for more than a decade. SLAM uses sensors on robots or autonomous vehicles to build a map and navigate in an unknown environment, such as a mine.

“Someday, someone will take their nextgeneration HD3D video camera to Florence and image Michelangelo’s David,” Junkins says. “They will then take home a 3-D video of this priceless object and with friendly software that came with their HD3D camera, they can rotate it, zoom it, fly all around it, and see it in an infinity of ways with much more threedimensional detail than the unaided human eye can see.

National Academy of Engineering and International Academy of Astronautics

Junkins has an industrial partner, SPEC, in Austin that is building the HD3D sensor; they expect to have the device operational in the coming months. Junkins says that without SPEC, HD3D would probably have remained a “science project” in the LASR lab, but “these guys are at the cutting edge in laser sensing and have essentially fused our ideas with work they were already doing” in order to accelerate development of the first prototype. SPEC is licensing the intellectual property to build HD3D that Junkins created with his recent Ph.D. graduate Manoranjan Majji.

26

1997

Theodore von Karman

“They will be able to see the near-microscopic chisel scars Michelangelo made if desired. Such high-definition three-dimensional capture technologies are coming in a few years and will significantly change the world. So let your imagination go, and you can anticipate a large number of ways such technologies will accelerate progress on many fronts as well as provide new means of communication, human interaction and, undoubtedly, entertainment.” O

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

aero.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

812 Students (Fall 2010)

Aerodynamics & Propulsion

675 Undergraduate 137 Graduate

U.S. News & World Report Rankings (among public institutions)

6 Undergraduate 6 Graduate

32 Faculty 15 Professors

8 Associate professors

3 Assistant professors

6 Nontenured/non–tenure track

3 National Academy of Engineering Members 10 Endowed Positions 4 Chairs 4 Professorships 2 Development professors

Research $14.4 million in research expenditures 146 proposals submitted 108 awards $11.6 million in research awards

• Boundary-layer stability and transition • Laminar flow control • Computational fluid dynamics • Combustion • Aeroelastics • Hypersonics • Chemical and thermal nonequilibrium • Active flow control • Diagnostics

Dynamics & Controls

• Autonomous stability and control • Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) • Robotic systems • Analytical and computational methods • Rigid-body dynamics • Spacecraft formation flying • Sensing • Intelligent control • Orbital mechanics

Materials & Structures

• Mechanics of composite materials • Computational mechanics • Experimental solid mechanics • Multifunctional and nanomaterials • Nanomechanics • Damping • Wave propagation • Structural health monitoring

28

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Striving to minimize the guesswork involved in oil production

by Kara Bounds Socol In 1956, James Dean offered movie audiences one of the most memorable scenes in cinematic history. Dean portrayed ranch hand Jett Rink in Giant, whose triumph was palpable as his only oil well hit its target. With outstretched arms and his face to the sky, Rink freely let oil cover him from head to toe. Instantly, he became a rich man.

Minimizing the guesswork

In virtually all movies celebrating the fortunechanging role of the oil industry, luck tends to be the primary component of success. And although luck still has its place in this makeor-break business, Texas A&M petroleum engineering researchers are making significant strides toward replacing this gamble with data availability and scientific accuracy.

Texas A&M is at the forefront of reservoir model development, boasting some of the field’s most prominent names as members of its faculty. Among these researchers are Michael King, the John and Debbie Bethancourt Endowed Professor in Petroleum Engineering, and Akhil Datta-Gupta, the LeSuer Chair in Reservoir Management.

From the exorbitant costs of wells to the high price of treating water involved in extraction, oil recovery is expensive. Many in the oil industry therefore rely on reservoir simulation models to help diminish financial risks by turning shots in the dark into educated speculations.

MODEL ENGINEERS Streamlines represent the flow of oil, water and gas between wells in a reservoir. Regions with many lines are well swept, whereas regions with few lines indicate locations for potential infill drilling targets.

The men met years ago at British Petroleum (now BP), where Datta-Gupta was an engineering specialist working with King, the team leader of the fluid-flow group. Datta-Gupta transitioned into the academic world, coming to Texas A&M in 1994. King, however, remained at BP for 27 years, leaving his senior adviser position for a Texas A&M faculty appointment only two years ago.

Despite their different career paths, the bonds that Datta-Gupta and King forged led to multiple research collaborations. One such effort in the late 1980s yielded streamline techniques for reservoir modeling.

The art of performance prediction

A reservoir simulation model starts as a computerized, three-dimensional picture of an oil reservoir. In developing these models, researchers use mathematical equations to

29

The models help executives decide whether the amount of oil they will potentially recover makes a project financially viable. model the physical processes taking place in the reservoir. Seismic, well and other subsurface information is gathered from many sources. This data is compiled into computer models that convey such information as the length and continuity of the reservoir, its geological makeup, pore sizes, permeability and architectural characteristics.

Streamline simulation takes the conceptualization a step further by looking at predicted fluid flow through these models.

From this information, oil industry executives can determine the number of wells to employ and the optimal well placement and oil-recovery method. Models give them an idea of where injection wells are needed to keep subsurface fluid pressure from dropping. These models show which reservoir regions aren’t being depleted by current wells. And, most important, the models help executives decide whether the amount of oil they will potentially recover makes a project financially viable.

Ultimately, oil executives want to minimize the number of wells, minimize cost and minimize the developmental footprint, Datta-Gupta says.

Like weather reports, reservoir simulations are merely predictions. But whereas a weather forecast might give a prediction days ahead of time, reservoir simulations are often making these judgments months or even years out.

“Part of what we need to get good at is uncertainty quantification,” King says. “A reservoir model may have lots of detail and information, but little might be hard information. We’re working at getting performance prediction to look like what’s actually going on in the field.”

Too much information From the exorbitant costs of wells to the high price of treating water involved in extraction, oil recovery is expensive. Texas A&M petroleum engineering researchers are at the forefront of reservoir model development, which can help industry exectives decide where to drill.

30

Collecting as much data as possible may seem like a good thing. Gathering data for a reservoir model, however, results in tens to hundreds of millions of computational elements — more information than a computer can handle. Converting this high-resolution ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

To develop a subsurface model, researchers must integrate geologic, petrophysical, geophysical, well and production data into a coherent three-dimensional representation of the reservoir, here shown as a complex computational grid that can then be used to model flow and predict reservoir performance.

model into a lower-resolution one that a computer can run, yet maintaining the details critical to understanding the reservoir, can present a formidable challenge.

Aggie efforts

“We either keep the cell physics and lose resolution, or we maintain resolution and simplify some of the physics,” King says.

But Datta-Gupta and King aren’t the only Texas A&M researchers working to improve reservoir simulation models. Among others are petroleum engineering assistant professors Behnam Jafarpour, W.F. and Marilyn Albers Family Faculty Fellow, and Eduardo Gildin, C.J. Craft Jr. Faculty Fellow, who are developing numerical techniques related to reservoir management and optimization.

Another is Duane McVay, associate professor of petroleum engineering and the Mike and Heidi Gatens Development Professor in Unconventional Resources. McVay is among the leading authorities on unconventional reservoirs — those that require massive stimulation treatments or special recovery processes and technologies to produce an economically feasible volume of oil. Heavy oil and tar sands are examples of unconventional reservoirs.

The former option is called “upscaling” and is King’s forte. The latter, known as “streamline simulation,” is Datta-Gupta’s specialty. In 2007, the Society of Petroleum Engineers published an industry-standard textbook on streamline simulation that Datta-Gupta and King wrote.

Fine-scale features of high-resolution models can have a critical impact on reservoir performance. With upscaling, King can determine whether a model needs to remain in high resolution or whether it can go to a lower resolution and maintain its quality of detailed information. This decision entails sorting through endless computational elements, determining which are vital to the model. To be effective, the upscaled model must replicate such fine-scale flow behavior as reservoir pressure, injection or production rate, and the performance of injected fluids.

With streamline simulation, Datta-Gupta separates three-dimensional problems into a series of one-dimensional elements and then uses equations to track the fluid fronts along these elements. This process drastically reduces computation time compared with conventional methods.

King says the streamline-based inversion techniques Datta-Gupta has developed are beyond anything that has ever been done.

The international oil industry now routinely uses the model innovations that Texas A&M researchers have developed. These improvements have also led to the creation of several software programs.

The two scenarios

Streamline simulation involves “closed-loop” reservoir management and optimization, King says. This process entails making shortterm predictions — about a year out — to develop an initial model and then updating

Dr. Mike King

Petroleum Engineering John and Debbie Bethancourt Professor 979.845.1488 mike.king@pe.tamu.edu

Dr. Akhil Datta-Gupta

Petroleum Engineering Professor and LeSuer Chair in Reservoir Management 979.847.9030 a.datta-gupta@pe.tamu.edu

31

With their students, King and Datta-Gupta are developing better techniques to represent the impact of fine-scale features of the reservoir on petroleum recovery; better ways to integrate production data into reservoir models; and better approaches to reservoir management.

“Part of what we need to get good at is uncertainty quantification. A reservoir model may have lots of detail and information, but little might be hard information. We’re working at getting performance prediction to look like what’s actually going on in the field.”

the model with new feedback from the reservoir. Doing so lets researchers fine-tune the simulation process as they compare their predictions with reality.

Although all the many details that reservoir models yield are important, King says, oil producers are ultimately interested in two questions: What is the best-case scenario and what is the worst-case?

As world leaders in developing streamlinebased flow simulation, Texas A&M researchers are getting closer to answering these crucial questions. O

Texas A&M Engineering is at the forefront of streamline-based multiphase flow simulation technology, and Datta-Gupta and King have written the first textbook in this area.

32

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

www.pe.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

968 Students (Fall 2010)

• Advanced drilling technology

630 Undergraduate 338 Graduate

• Advanced production technology

U.S. News & World Report Rankings

• Energy

(among public institutions)

• Enhanced recovery

1 Undergraduate 2 Graduate

• Environmental and water issues

21 Faculty 12 Professors 6 Associate professors 3 Assistant professors

• Analysis of reservoir performance

• Heavy oil recovery • Hydraulic fracturing • Improved oil recovery • Naturally fractured reservoirs • Oilfield chemistry • Reservoir characterization

2 National Academy of Engineering Members

• Reservoir simulation

18 Endowed Positions

• Shale gas

• Tight gas

6 Chairs 3 Professorships 4 Development professors 5 Faculty fellows

• Resource assessment and uncertainty analysis

• Unconventional resource assessment • Upscaling • Well completions

$16 Million Overall Budget

• Well control

48 percent — research

• Well stimulation

By Deana Totzke

34

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

A new twist on an old technology to help doctors diagnose cancer earlier

W

hen a woman discovers a lump in her breast, one of the first steps in diagnosis is a biopsy. But results can take up to two weeks and create sleepless nights for the patient.

Elastography, a procedure developed a decade ago, is providing a faster, more accurate picture of what’s going on inside the patient.

Raffaella Righetti, assistant professor in the Biomedical Imaging and Genomic Signal Processing area of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, has studied the technology since its inception.

A twist on the traditional ultrasound technique, ultrasound elastography uses sound waves to detect tumors by indicating tissue stiffness.

“Many cancers do not possess a sonographic contrast that will make them detectable using standard ultrasound imaging methods, but they are much stiffer than the surrounding tissue,” Righetti says. “The idea is to create a new contrast mechanism that provides additional tissue information that can help a physician to diagnose and stage diseases or assess tissue physiological states.”

Both techniques use sound waves. Traditional ultrasound creates an image based on tissue echogenicity. The elastogram combines two views: the regular ultrasound image and a compression image — that is, an image produced while a technician presses on the tissue in question. How that tissue reacts speaks volumes.

A tumor can be five to 100 times stiffer than normal soft tissue. When a mechanical compression or vibration is applied, the tumor deforms less than the surrounding tissue.

Elastography takes advantage of this characteristic to quickly diagnose breast cancer without the use of a needle or a scalpel.

An early interest

Righetti became involved with elastography as a student in Florence, Italy, while fulfilling a requirement to finish her undergraduate thesis. After reading some early publications

by Jonathan Ophir from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston on elastography, she says she decided to go to Houston to learn more about the technique.

“The idea is to create a new contrast mechanism that provides additional tissue information that can help a physician to diagnose and stage diseases or assess tissue physiological states.”

“I was fascinated by this new technology, which seemed to be very promising — although still at its very early stages — so I decided to take a trip to Houston to meet Dr. Ophir and his group,” she says. “That trip marked the beginning of my collaboration with them.”

After working with Ophir for eight months, Righetti went back to Italy to write her thesis and present her work before flying back to Houston a few days after her defense.

“That thesis is the first official Italian document on elastography,” she says. “I ended up staying in Dr. Ophir’s lab for eight years until joining Texas A&M in 2007.”

Elastography has become a well-developed field since Righetti began her research.

Several companies have developed elastography scanners that are now used worldwide with standard ultrasound methods to diagnose several diseases. These techniques are used clinically to detect breast and prostate cancer and differentiate between malignant and benign lesions. In an effort to reduce the number of biopsies performed, researchers are also studying the feasibility of using a set

Dr. Raffaella Righetti

Electrical & Computer Engineering Assistant Professor 979.862.8586 righetti@ece.tamu.edu

35

Righetti, whose thesis is the first Italian document on ultrasound elastography, says the technique is an easy, safe and cost-effective way to help doctors diagnose cancer sooner than by using more traditional techniques.

of features to compare the appearance of tumors in sonograms and in elastograms.

“The technique is easy, safe, real-time, noninvasive; it doesn’t require a lot of training; and it has all the advantages of ultrasound-based imaging methods, including the fact that it could potentially be implemented in small portable devices.

And it’s relatively inexpensive compared to MRI and other imaging methods.”

Ultrasound elastography may also be used in the early detection of lymphedema, a condition involving an abnormal accumulation of lymphatic fluid in the interstitial space that causes swelling, often related to cancer.

Elastography could help assess the efficacy of current lymphedema treatments by imaging the tissue properties before and after treatment and could help in the design of more and better lymphedema treatments.

And ultrasound elastography’s cost-effectiveness is a major advantage.

“The technique is easy, safe, real-time, noninvasive; it doesn’t require a lot of training; and it has all the advantages of ultrasound-based 36

imaging methods, including the fact that it could potentially be implemented in small portable devices,” Righetti says. “And it’s relatively inexpensive compared to MRI and other imaging methods.”

On the horizon

Righetti says she joined the Texas A&M faculty so she could take advantage of the university’s facilities and research labs, allowing for more comparative studies. Her current collaborations within the electrical and computer engineering department include projects with Arum Han in the NanoBio Systems Laboratory and Steve Wright in the Magnetic Resonance Systems Laboratory.

Other collaborators at Texas A&M include J.N. Reddy in the Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Advanced Computational Mechanics Laboratory; Kristen Maitland in the Department of Biomedical Engineering’s Biomedical Optics Laboratory; Steven Riechman in the Human Countermeasures Laboratory of the health and kinesiology department; and Theresa W. Fossum, director of the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies.

“It’s exciting because you can find a lot of experts in any other field,” Righetti says.

“The potential is great because the facilities at Texas A&M are amazing and there is a ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

large number of people working on different things. That kind of collaboration makes a big difference. That’s what’s so exciting about working at Texas A&M, that there are a lot of opportunities.”

Righetti also collaborates with medical doctors, who she says are excited about elastography and its possibilities.

However, she says she gets the most satisfaction from working with her students, who have already generated three master’s theses, several conference publications and three peer-reviewed articles, among several other publications in preparation. Two of her master’s students working on this project have decided to continue their work in this field to pursue their Ph.D. degrees.

Research Projects Agency is sponsoring. The motivation behind these applications is that ultrasound imaging techniques have some distinctive characteristics (such as lack of radiation, portability and real-time imaging) that make them an attractive alternative to standard orthopedic diagnostic methods.

“The potential is great because the facilities at Texas A&M are amazing and there is a large number of people working on different things. That kind of collaboration makes a big difference.

That’s what’s so exciting about working at Texas A&M, that there are a lot of opportunities.”

“I can see the light in their eyes when they’re talking about all the different applications and possibilities, and I have students come up to me and say, ‘I didn’t know ultrasound could be used in so many applications,’” she says.

“It makes me happy to see how excited they are about the possibilities in the field that can help medicine.”

“Elastography is a very exciting field,” Righetti says. “I’ve seen it grow from the moment it was born until the moment in which it has become clinical, and we have made tremendous improvements on image quality, signal and image processing techniques involved in the modality.

And she says that one day she hopes to expand the uses of elastography to include novel orthopedic applications, a new research area at Texas A&M that the Defense Advanced

“I think that as a scientist and an engineer, it’s really an amazing experience to be able to observe the technological development of an idea and be part of it.” O

TRADITIONAL ULTRASOUND

ELASTOGRAM

This shows a traditional ultrasound image and a corresponding real-time elastogram of an ablated lesion in an ex vivo liver. In the elastogram, blue corresponds to hard tissue and red corresponds to soft tissue. The lesion is not clearly visible in the traditional ultrasound image because the ablation process does not change the echogenicity of the tissue significantly.

However, the lesion is clearly visible in the elastogram (dark blue area) because the ablation process hardens the tissue significantly. Image-guided therapy is another growing medical area where elastography may make a significant contribution and an area that Righetti and her students are currently investigating in the lab.

37

the

antenna artist

(the future of antenna technology)

By Kara Bounds Socol

Only a few Texas A&M engineering faculty members specialize in electromagnetics and microwaves. For the past five years, Gregory Huff, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been one of them. Unconventional in background and open-minded in approach, Huff may very well prove that a Texas A&M laboratory holds the future of antenna technologies.

Altering reality

2008 PECASE 2010 NSF CAREER

With a ponytail stretching the length of his back, an educational background in fine arts and a résumé boasting a 10-year stint as a French chef, Huff clearly defies the engineer stereotype. But when he made the leap from the kitchen and art studio to the classroom and lab, Huff says, he didn’t forsake his love of art but rather enriched it. In both art and engineering, he explains, “you have to start with a fresh canvas each time and paint your interpretation of the solution.”

Huff’s inspirations for “interpretive solutions” come in some pretty unusual forms, such as cuttlefish. By changing its skin color and texture, this bottom-dwelling cephalopod can go from completely camouflaged to totally obvious and back in fractions of a second.

Dr. Gregory Huff

Electrical & Computer Engineering Assistant Professor 979.862.4161 ghuff@ece.tamu.edu

38

“The idea,” Huff explains, “is to use that concept to change the electromagnetic properties of spacesuits, aircraft and buildings so they can look differently to radar and other sources of electromagnetic waves.”

Huff uses the analogy of a Maglite flashlight to explain this process. With a Maglite, the user can modify the way light comes out of it, altering such properties as color and number of light beams. In a similar vein, Huff and his

colleagues are enabling antennas to change the way they transmit energy, making objects look different — or completely transparent — to radio waves.

By necessity, Huff says, size matters in electromagnetics, and most antennas are large structures compared with the rest of the electronics packages. They also are typically fixed and rigid, so bending or moving them changes their electromagnetic properties.

One challenge for Huff and his fellow Texas A&M researchers, then, is to design antennas that can be flexible while still staying in tune, not dropping calls. They do this by displacing fluidic materials within them.

Huff and his colleagues are enabling antennas to change the way they transmit energy, making objects look different — or completely transparent — to radio waves.

By developing different techniques to move microfluids around the inside of antennas, researchers can achieve many objectives. For example, they can integrate antennas onto the outside of a uniform worn by a soldier, enabling her to maintain reliable radio contact while in motion. Or, like a cuttlefish, they can use the fluidics to mimic, camouflage or deceive.

The electromagnetic future

Huff and his colleagues aren’t typically concerned with end products but rather ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

39

with the pursuit of “enabling technologies” that will support the development of highly functional devices 10 or 15 years down the road. His group’s ideas for potential uses of smartphones, for instance, range from guiding unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) to acting as cognitive radios, gathering data from many unseen sources. Huff is likewise developing “hives” out of small UAVs that can collectively perform the function of a large antenna array without its drawbacks.

He has received two of the most coveted awards for teaching and research: the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the Army Research Office and U.S. Department of Defense. Other recognitions include a Young Scientist Award at the General Assemblies of L’Union RadioScientifique Internationale and an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Donald G. Dudley Jr. Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Huff is quick to note the contributions of his colleagues not only at other institutions but also across academic disciplines.

Huff says that key to being an effective educator is investing the same kind of enthusiasm, creativity and devotion into your teaching and research that you would dedicate to creating a work of art.

“Everything we do is fundamentally multidisciplinary work,” he says.

A passion that shows

During Huff’s brief career at Texas A&M, some of his field’s most revered institutions have repeatedly singled him out.

“Not everyone can — or wants to be — a great artist,” he says. “If you don’t love your art, no one will. Your passion shows up in what you do.” O

Huff and students discuss the operation of a reconfigurable antenna design enabled by vascular networks and prepare it for radiation pattern measurements in the anechoic chamber. (From left to right, graduate student Jeff Jensen, Huff, and undergraduate students Amanda Couch and Trey Norman)

40

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

ece.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

1,403 Students (Fall 2010)

Electromagnetics & Microwaves

851 Undergraduate 552 Graduate

U.S. News & World Report Rankings (among public institutions)

14 Graduate, Computer Engineering 14 Graduate, Electrical Engineering 67 Faculty 35 Professors 17 Associate professors 15 Assistant professors

3 National Academy of Engineering Members 22 Endowed Positions 7 Chairs 11 Professorships 4 Faculty Fellows

$21.7 Million Overall Budget 64 percent — Research

• RF & mm-wave integrated circuits • RF MEMS, microwave circuits and antennas • Numerical methods in electromagnetics

Analog & Mixed-Signal Circuits

• Advanced analog-to-digital converters • Mixed-signal IC test and calibration • Low power analog design circuits and systems

Biomedical Systems

• Nanofluidic biomedical systems • Intervention in gene regulatory networks • Ultrasonic and magnetic resonance imaging

Communication & Information Systems

• Wireless communication and networks • Multiterminal information theory • Cognitive radio communications • Source and channel coding • Secure communications

Control Systems

• Robust control • Control of biological systems • Model-free measurement-based control

Computer Engineering • Electronic design automation • Computer architecture • Cyber-physical systems • Integrated circuit design

Energy Systems

• Smart grid • Solar and wind energy systems • Reliability and fault protection of power systems • Subsea power systems • Power electronics and motor drives

Solid State & Fiber Optics

• Nanostructured materials 22 Young Investigator Awards (since 2002) • Integrated optics and fiber optics • Quantum and nonlinear optics (NSF, ARO, ONR, AFOSR, DTRA, PECASE) • Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS)

Rajagopal Kumbakonam

LUMINARY IN CONTINUUM MECHANICS

by Gene Charleton

42 42

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

W

hen you drive to work in the morning, it’s hard to see much similarity between the blood flowing through your veins and arteries and the asphalt paving on the street.

Unless you’re Kumbakonam Rajagopal: Then it’s still not easy, but you can explain how the two systems are not entirely different.

“Blood as it’s flowing through your body is a fluid, but as it forms a clot it becomes less fluidlike and more solidlike with regard to the time, length and force scale of observation,” he says.

“Continuum mechanics allows you to describe its behavior all the way through.”

Rajagopal is distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and Regents Professor in Texas A&M ’s Dwight Look College of Engineering. He’s also a professor of biomedical engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, and mathematics, and he holds the Forsyth Chair in Mechanical Engineering. And he is a senior scientist at the Texas Transportation Institute in The Texas A&M University System.

He’s a pioneer of continuum mechanics, a mathematical discipline that allows engineers to build mathematical models of materials that are both solids and fluids, such as asphalt, glass and, yes, blood. Using these models, engineers can predict how much asphalt will yield when you drive on it or how much shear from the pumping action of an artificial heart

will damage blood cells and increase the risk of life-threatening blood clots.

“As engineers, we usually think of materials as being either solid or fluid and model them separately,” says Arun Srinivasa, an associate professor in Texas A&M’s mechanical engineering department. “Rajagopal was one of the first to understand that you can treat some materials the same and that this would be very useful.

“Blood as it’s flowing through your body is a fluid, but as it forms a clot it becomes less fluidlike and more solidlike. Continuum mechanics allows you to describe its behavior all the way through.”

“If there is no clear distinction [between them], why are we building models that force you to choose one or the other?” Srinivasa says.

Srinivasa has worked with Rajagopal on continuum mechanics–related problems for more than 20 years. His own work draws heavily on techniques Rajagopal developed.

“He was a senior faculty member when I met him, and I was very junior,” Srinivasa says. “I specialize in aspects of metal forming. Within a week of meeting him, he said to me, ‘What’s this stuff about metal forming?’ He was not standoffish at all.

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HONORS & DISTINCTIONS Co–editor-in-chief, International Journal of Engineering Science, 2007–present; currently serves on editorial boards of 35 international peer-reviewed journals Fellow, Indian National Academy of Engineering, 2010 Honoris Causa (DSc), University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, 2010 Springer Professorship, University of California, Berkeley, 2009 Mathematics Distinguished Lecturer, University of Central Florida, 2009 Guest of Honor, Release of Golden Jubilee Book Series and the inaugural issue of IITM’s International Journal of Advances in Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, Chennai, India, 2009 Honorary Professor, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 2008–present Adjunct Professor, Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, 2008–present Regents Professor, Texas A&M University, 2008–present Distinguished Lecturer, Hong Kong Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Sept. 28, 2007 Zable Medal, International Technological Institute, 2007 Hall of Fame of Science and Technology, International Technological Institute, 2007 Special Guest of Honor, International Workshop on Complex Systems in Fluid Flows and Sedimentation Processes held at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkatta, Aug. 27–31, 2007 Honorary Professor, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2007–present Extraordinary Professor, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa, (2007–present) University of Auckland Foundation Distinguished Visitor Award, 2006–2007 University Grants Commission Center for Excellence in Fluid Mechanics, India, Award for Excellence in Fluid Mechanics Research, 2006 Memorial Medal, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, 2006 Steering Committee, Jindrich Necas Center for Mathematical Modeling, Charles University, Prague, 2006–present Sigma Xi Lecturer, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C., 2006 Distinguished Professor (Honorary), Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, 2005–present Archie Higdon Award, American Society of Engineering Education, 2005 Eringen Medal, Society of Engineering Science, 2004 Bush Excellence Award for Faculty in International Research, Bush Foundation, 2004 Midwest Mechanics Speaker, 2004 Cullimore Lecture, New Jersey Institute of Technology, 2004 Invited One-Hour lecture, Stokes’ Death Centenary Meeting, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, Ireland, 2003 Distinguished Professor, Texas A&M University, 2003–present Distinguished Research Award, Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University, 2002 Distinguished Teaching Award, Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University, 2000 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2000 Sigma Xi Lecture, General Motors Research Center, Warren, Mich., 2000 Outstanding Alumni Award, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, 1998 Forsyth Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, 1996–present Fellow, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), 1991 Orr Lectures, University College, Dublin, Ireland, 1991 President’s Distinguished Research Award (Senior Category): University of Pittsburgh, 1991 Chaired Professorship: James T. MacLeod Professor of Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 1991 President, Society for Natural Philosophy, 1989–1991 Board of Visitors’ Faculty Award, School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 1987 Board of Directors, Society for Natural Philosophy Listed in International Directory of Distinguished Leadership, American Men and Women of Science and Who’s Who Among Asian Americans 44

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

“I think I could have been as happy and productive as a professor of English literature or a philosopher.”

“He is always willing to argue about technical points without worrying about whether he is talking to a young person or a senior person.”

Rajagopal was born in New Delhi, India, and studied mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology. He received his master’s degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Minnesota. He joined the Texas A&M Engineering faculty in 1996.

Rajagopal’s early engineering interests were not in continuum mechanics.

“As an undergraduate, I was very interested in control theory,” he says. “But when I took a control theory course in graduate school, it didn’t excite me.” On the other hand, he found that courses in continuum mechanics fascinated him.

Rajagopal’s work hasn’t been confined to the academic side of engineering and mathematics. He holds patents for his continuum mechanics–related work in fields as divergent as biomechanics and granular material characterization to air brake control systems. He says that the strength of continuum mechanics as an analytical tool is that it can be used to describe materials as their forms change.

Continuum mechanics can’t tell engineers everything about a material, he notes.

“It won’t give you accuracy at the microscopic level, but it can at the macro level,” he says. “As in other problems, you need the proper tool.

You need the proper tool. You need to decide if you’re going to use a knife or a screwdriver.”

Rajagopal is an unusual engineer in other ways. He quotes English poetry and the great 45

philosophers as readily as most engineers discuss Navier–Stokes equations or finite element analysis.

“I think I could have been as happy and productive as a professor of English literature or a philosopher,” he says. He says that sometimes his students get frustrated with the way he weaves into his lectures allusions to philosophers and classical engineers and their contributions.

“It is important that students learn the foundations of engineering and science and to understand where the theories and techniques they will use in their work today originated. There is more to engineering than simply solving problems.”

Rajagopal isn’t only a creative researcher. The American Society of Engineering Education has presented him with the Archie Higdon Award in recognition of his effective teaching.

“It is important that students learn the foundations of engineering and science and to understand where the theories and techniques they will use in their work today originated,” he says. “There is more to engineering than simply solving problems.”

This approach is more than just a tip of the hat to the idea of being a well-rounded engineer. He puts it into practice in his own work.

“The best paper I’ve ever written was a consequence of a course I took in philosophy,” he says. “I used the idea in thermodynamics.”

He is among the top 1 percent of researchers cited in journals tracked by the Institute of Scientific Information.

Rajagopal has been recognized internationally for his significant contributions to the world of continuum mechanics, computational mechanics, biomechanics and technology. Among these honors was his election to the international Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology (HOFEST). HOFEST members are many of the heaviest hitters in engineering, science and technology, including such luminaries as George Eastman (Eastman Kodak), Thomas Alva Edison, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Louis Pasteur and George Westinghouse (Westinghouse).

46

He also holds the Eringen Medal, the highest honor of the Society of Engineering Science.

Several winners of the Nobel Prize also have received the Eringen Medal.

And he is president of the Society for Natural Philosophy.

His colleagues also have honored him by organizing international conferences on continuum mechanics–related topics in his honor. One, titled “Perambulations in Continuum Mechanics” to recognize the wideranging applications of Rajagopal’s work, was held in November 2010 in College Station and featured presentations by researchers from the United States, Brazil, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Portugal and South Africa. Two special sessions in his honor were held during the 2010 annual meeting of the Society of Engineering Science in Ames, Iowa.

A similar conference held in Chennai, India, drew continuum mechanics researchers from across South Asia.

In 2010, the International Journal of Engineering Science published a special issue honoring him, and special issues of Mathematical Modeling and Methods in the Applied Sciences, Journal of Structural Changes in Solids, and Applications of Mathematics dedicated to him have been published in 2011. A special issue of Advances in Engineering Science and Applied Mathematics is forthcoming this year.

Srinivasa says Rajagopal’s long list of accomplishments illustrates the researcher’s approach to engineering and to life.

“His thirst for knowledge is mind-boggling,” Srinivasa says. O Dr. Kumbakonam Rajagopal

Mechanical Engineering Distinguished Professor Regents Professor Forsyth Chair in Mechanical Engineering Professor of Mathematics Professor of Biomedical Engineering Professor of Civil Engineering Professor of Chemical Engineering Senior Research Scientist, Texas Transportation Institute 979.862.4552 krajagopal@tamu.edu

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Quick Facts

Research Areas

1,548 Students (Fall 2010)

• Computational mechanics

1,162 Undergraduate 386 Graduate

• Aerosol technology • Design systems

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• Energy systems

(among public institutions)

• Heat transfer

0 Undergraduate 1 9 Graduate

• Gas dynamics and propulsion

54 Faculty 23 Professors 10 Associate professors 21 Assistant professors

17 Endowed Positions 5 Chairs 9 Professorships 3 Career development professors

• Innovation, design reasoning and methods • High-temperature materials • Nano-energy • Networked intelligence machines • Plasma engineering and diagnostics • Polymer technology • Precision mechatronics • Thermofluids • Tribology • Turbine heat transfer • Turbomachinery • Vibration, control and electromechanics

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Optical-electronic sensor allows management of algae

lipid production for biofuels Algae grown for biofuel could be a sweet deal, but without constant monitoring, its growth process can be inefficient and economically untenable, according to a Texas AgriLife Research expert.

Alex Thomasson, AgriLife Research engineer, has developed an optical-electronic sensor that will automatically measure algae growth stages and allow micromanagement of its production of oils for biofuels.

One of the main advantages of using algae for biofuel is its rapid growth potential, Thomasson says. The other advantage is that algae can be induced to produce large quantities of lipids, the fatty molecules that can be used to produce a wide range of hydrocarbon fuels.

Both the amount and type of lipids that algae produces depend upon how well the growth processes of the microalgae are regulated.

However, the very speed at which some algae grow — some strains may double their mass every six to 12 hours — makes management tricky, he says.

“Very rapid measurements will be required when scaling up to commercial production of algae as a biofuel feedstock,” Thomasson says.

Most algal-oil production scenarios consist of two stages, he says. The first stage involves promoting optimal growth so that the number of algal cells increases rapidly. The second stage requires limiting nutrients at exactly the right time to maximize lipid production by the cells.

“This is a natural response of many organisms; as their nutritional intake is reduced,

they tend to convert more of their nutrients to stored energy, such as lipids or fat, to protect against future starvation,” Thomasson says. “In fact, a process-control system is necessary in both production stages to ensure that inputs and durations are optimal.”

One of the main advantages of using algae for biofuel is its rapid growth potential — some strains may double their mass every six to 12 hours ­— but that makes management tricky.

To help solve this problem, Thomasson headed a team that includes Ruixiu Sui, a U.S. Department of Agriculture engineer in Mississippi; and Yufeng Ge, an assistant research engineer, and Yao Yao, a graduate research assistant, both at Texas A&M. Thomasson and the team agreed that measuring optical density of algal cells as they grew in water was the most straightforward and readily achievable way to go, he says.

“In research situations, optical density is typically measured by collecting a sample of aqueous solution, taking the sample to the laboratory, and using a spectrophotometer to measure the absorbance of the sample at a specific wavelength,” Thomasson says. “OD probes are available and could potentially be incorporated into a process-control system, but those currently on the market had not been proven to be of acceptable accuracy, ruggedness, etc., for a process-control system for open-pond algae production.”

Dr. J. Alex Thomasson

Biological & Agricultural Engineering Professor 979.458.3598 thomasson@tamu.edu

49

Scaling up from algal research raceways like this one to commercial production of algae as a biofuel feedstock will probably require rapid measurements.

The sensor accurately measured the slow-and-steady increase of optical density during the growth process, as well as the drop in optical density when more water and nutrients were added, Thomasson says. Tests were so successful that the team has applied for a patent.

To be suitable for commercial production, the optical sensor needed to be mountable at a fixed location in a production facility, operate without human intervention and provide measurements that could be used to adjust production in “real time,” Thomasson explained in a paper the team presented at a recent meeting of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

Real time is a computer science term for systems that function instantaneously or nearly so.

In addition to all the above parameters, Thomasson thought it a good idea not to take measurements in just one wavelength of light, 50

as did the laboratory tests. Multiple measurements at different wavelengths would ensure increased reliability, he says.

Therefore, the team experimented with wavelengths ranging from 250 nanometers to 2,500 nanometers, from the ultraviolet through infrared.

After successfully comparing sensor results to actual lab analyses, the team designed, constructed and tested a prototype sensor on an algae-production raceway in June 2010.

The sensor took measurements at five-second intervals. Field tests at the A&M System’s AgriLife Algae Research and Development Facility showed the prototype sensor accurately and consistently measured the optical density in the raceway and therefore enables real-time growth management.

The sensor accurately measured the slow-andsteady increase of optical density during the growth process, as well as the drop in optical density when more water and nutrients were added, Thomasson says. Tests were so successful that the team has applied for a patent. O

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baen.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

405 Students (Fall 2010)

• Agricultural air quality

309 Undergraduate 96 Graduate

• Animal waste management

U.S. News & World Report Rankings (among public institutions)

5 Undergraduate 3 Graduate

25 Faculty 14 Professors 6 Associate professors 2 Assistant professors 3 Nontenured/non–tenure track

3 Endowed Positions

2 Chairs 1 Professorship

• Biofuels • Biological process systems • Biosecurity • Bioseparations • Controlled environment agriculture • Cotton engineering • Environmental and natural resources • Food process engineering • Food safety engineering • Food security • Irrigation

$8 Million Overall Budget

• Machine systems

50 percent — research

• Modeling ecological/water systems • Nanotechnology in biological systems • Precision agriculture • Water quality

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PORT SECURITY

Helping to increase the chance of detecting smuggled nuclear materials at U.S. ports and borders

By Lesley Kriewald

52 52

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

ith more than 300 sea and river ports, and more than 3,700 cargo and passenger terminals in the U.S. maritime system, security officials fear that terrorists may use the nation’s ports and waterways to smuggle materials into the country for an attack.

Stopping a terrorist from smuggling nuclear material into the country inside a shipping container — 12 million of which enter the country annually through ports — is the goal of a collaborative effort funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO).

As part of the $7.5 million project, Gary Gaukler, an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, leads a research team that includes Associate Professor Yu Ding, postdoctoral researcher Chenhua Li, and several undergraduate and graduate students.

Dr. Gary Gaukler

Industrial & Systems Engineering Assistant Professor 979.458.2339 gaukler@tamu.edu

53

Together, the team focuses its expertise in queuing networks and modeling and simulation on how best to use radiation detectors at U.S. borders and ports to help inspectors find — and recover — nuclear materials being smuggled into the country.

“What kinds of detectors can we rely on? We need to know what kind of incidents a detector will see, and given the detectors you have, how probable is it that you will detect that material?”

“What kinds of detectors can we rely on?”

Gaukler says. “We need to know what kind of incidents a detector will see, and given the detectors you have, how probable is it that you will detect that material?”

Government agencies such as the DNDO are concerned that adversaries, or terrorists, might be able to acquire small amounts of

54

nuclear materials — say, several kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium — and smuggle them into the United States. Once here, the small amounts can be assembled into a nuclear weapon.

“It’s much easier to detect a fully assembled nuclear weapon than small amounts of nuclear material,” Gaukler says, “because the more nuclear material you have, the brighter the signal it gives off to a radiation detector. So if you want to avoid detection, it may be much smarter to smuggle a weapon in piecemeal.”

One way to increase the chances of finding smuggled material is to spend more time inspecting individual containers. But, Gaukler says, more time is a luxury that most border and port inspectors don’t have.

“Consider the scale of the problem,” he says.

“One kilogram of HEU, a very dense material, would be about the size of a baseball. Imagine trying to find that in a standard 40-foot shipping container.”

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Gaukler also says that HEU is a low-brightness material, meaning that it doesn’t give off many photons (gamma rays) or neutrons — which in turn means that radiation detectors that rely on counting these particles may miss the signal. Another problem that complicates detection efforts is nuisance alarms, which occur when background radiation sets off the detectors.

“It’s hard to distinguish whether a particular reading is from smuggled nuclear material or from background radiation, either from the ground or the sky, or even from certain things such as ceramics and fertilizers that have a small amount of gamma readings,” Gaukler says. “So there’s the fundamental detection tradeoff: Either you set the radiation threshold on the detector high, which means you may miss some low-brightness materials, or you set it low and get a lot of false alarms.”

At U.S. ports today, containers are first scanned through radiation portal monitors (RPMs). If no alarm registers, the container is loaded and sent on its way. But if an alarm does sound, the container undergoes a secondary inspection while remaining closed.

If this secondary scan also detects radiation, inspectors open the container and examine it.

Intelligence information — such as who and where the shipment is coming from, where it is going and who loaded the container — is part of this escalation system. Software called the Automated Tracking System (ATS) tracks this information, which is known 24 hours before any shipment leaves its home port bound for the U.S. On the basis of this information, each container is issued a “risk score.” Then, when the container arrives in the U.S., those risk scores are evaluated, and a percentage of the highest-risk containers are segregated and investigated.

Gaukler says the performance of the current ATS-based inspection system hinges on two things: accurate assessment of high- and lowrisk containers and having sensitive passive detectors, such as RPMs.

“The problem is that we already know that RPMs are largely incapable of detecting small quantities of shielded low-brightness material, such as HEU,” Gaukler says. “And we don’t know how good the ATS risk score classification is because we’ve never had this type of nuclear material smuggled into the U.S. before. It’s just never happened. So there is no historical data to test the performance of the ATS.”

“There’s the fundamental detection tradeoff: Either you set the radiation threshold on the detector high, which means you may miss some low-brightness materials, or you set it low and get a lot of false alarms.”

So to increase the chances of discovering small amounts of hidden nuclear materials, Gaukler and his research team are looking at the inspection system at a port and modeling it as a queuing network. This bird’s-eye view allows the team to evaluate any given configuration of detectors and containers and to determine the average detection probability versus how much time is spent on each container.

A key part is knowing what’s supposed to be inside each container. Some materials, such as lead, help to hide the HEU by blocking the nuclear material’s radiation signal. This effect is called shielding.

“If we know how much shielding is available in the container, we can make better decisions on whether to investigate further,” Gaukler says.

“For example, cotton T-shirts don’t provide any shielding, but hiding the material inside the cylinder bore of an engine block provides a great deal of shielding that the RPM just doesn’t pick up.

“So we argue that the differentiation ought to be done based on container contents, not necessarily based on ATS risk score.”

55

Gaukler has suggested using radiography equipment to take a sequence of images of a container and its contents. Those images show the various densities of the materials in the container, and the images can be compiled to produce a 3-D model of what’s inside the container. Then the researchers use Monte Carlo n-Particle software to simulate a radiation scan on that container.

“We believe that we have a better inspection policy for ports and border crossings. DNDO and DHS are interested in deploying radiography nodes in ports, probably within the next five years.”

Each simulation is run twice, the first time simulating background radiation and the second time simulating a quantity of HEU in the container. This experiment simulates the amount of gamma and neutron particles that a passive detector would see coming out of that container. If the container has no nuclear material, the RPM should see very little radiation. If nuclear material is present, the RPM will detect more radiation, but the contents will shield the radiation signal.

“This approach produces two distributions, and the closer they are together, the harder it will be to detect that something is there,” Gaukler says. “And the more dense the materials inside a container are, the harder it will be to detect the radiation passively by using RPMs, so in our proposed inspection policy, the more likely we will be to escalate that container to secondary inspection.”

This radiography node replaces the “somewhat fuzzy” ATS node so that decisions are made on the basis of container contents.

“We can completely quantify that decision to escalate a container,” Gaukler says.

The team has shown that their model performs better than the current inspection system in terms of time and probability of detection.

“We believe that we have a better inspection policy for ports and border crossings,” Gaukler says. “ In fact, DNDO and DHS are interested in deploying radiography nodes in ports, probably within the next five years.” O

The Big Picture Gaukler’s research is just one part of a multidisciplinary, four-pronged approach to the problem of stopping nuclear material from entering the country: • A team of researchers led by Craig Marianno from the Department of Nuclear Engineering who are developing next-generation radiation detectors • A group of mathematics researchers led by Wolfgang Bangerth from the College of Science who are modeling the contents of shipping containers to determine what emissions might be detected outside the shipping container • A team from the George Bush School of Government and Public Service led by Arnie Vedlitz that is examining policy and societal implications of nuclear detection in foreign ports and border crossings • Gaukler’s team, which is determining how best to use the system of detectors Together, the $7.5 million project is called SHIELD (Smuggled HEU Interdiction through Enhanced anaLysis and Detectors), which DNDO and the Department of Homeland Security have supported. William Charlton, associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and director of the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute, heads this multidisciplinary effort.

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639 Students (Fall 2010)

• Applied probability

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• Cognitive ergonomics/human factors

275 Graduate

• Energy-sustainable operations

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• Health care systems

(among public institutions)

6 Undergraduate 6 Graduate

• Homeland security • Logistics and supply chain management • Management and decision analysis

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• Synthetic environments system design for sustainment and remanufacturing activities

A Different Kind

of

Coast Guard

by Kara Bounds Socol

58

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Why students, agencies and businesses are turning to Texas A&M’s Haynes Coastal Engineering Lab for education … and answers The destruction unleashed upon New Orleans and the Gulf Coast during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina was horrific. Levees constructed to prevent flooding were no match for the storm. Entire sections of the I-10 Twin Span Bridge over Lake Pontchartrain broke away.

To prevent a repeat of these structure failures, the New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned to researchers at Texas A&M University’s Reta and Bill Haynes ’46 Coastal Engineering Laboratory, one of the few facilities in the world housing a shallowwater 3-D wave basin. After studying levees and bridge segments under varying wave conditions, the Corps of Engineers left the lab with a greater understanding of what went wrong and how to fix it.

Photo © Scott Goldsmith

59

Wave Generator Idle Position

WAVE BASIN (75' x 120')

The place to be for ocean engineering

WORKING AREA: 5,287.5 SF (75' x 70.5')

Only a few universities boast ocean engineering programs, and Texas A&M’s Zachry Department of Civil Engineering offers the country’s largest. The program and its facilities attract students and clients from across the globe. Last year, roughly 165 undergraduates and 80 graduate students studied ocean engineering at Texas A&M in such diverse areas as dredging, hurricane impacts, beaches, coastal erosion, shore protection, anchor moorings, computational fluid dynamics, wave energy and offshore platform design.

75'

ROCK BEACH (LIMESTONE) AREA: 1,869 SF (75' x 24.92')

120'

70.5'

Tie Downs

Key to the Texas A&M program’s stellar reputation is a collection of centers and laboratories that focus on virtually every aspect of ocean engineering. The Haynes lab is among them, housing both the wave basin and the nation’s only two-dimensional tow-dredge tank.

The wave basin

Removable Concrete Blocks for Current

Wave Generator Idle Position

WAVE BASIN (75' x 120')

Robert E. Randall, Bauer Professor and director of the Ocean Engineering Program, is director of the Haynes lab and the Center for Dredging Studies, which the university and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station jointly support. He says both the wave basin and the tow-dredge tank attract government agencies, researchers and companies in the offshore industry and other fields involving rivers, harbors, coastal erosion and protection, and dredging.

• Largest ocean engineering program in the U.S. WORKING AREA: 5,287.5 SF (75' x 70.5')

• One of a few facilities in the U.S. housing a shallowwater 3-D wave basin • Home of the only dredging carriage and twodimensional tow-dredge tank in the U.S. • Offers testing for industry and degree programs for students in the areas of dredging, hurricane impacts, beaches, coastal erosion, shore protection, anchor mooring, computational fluid dynamics, wave energy and offshore platform design

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ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

In essence, the wave basin tests the ability of jetties, breakwaters, levees, vertical walls and bridges to perform as they should. It also studies the motion of ships and offshore vessels.

full-sized structures. Water depths are adjusted to accommodate the model size, with a maximum depth of four feet. Waves can reach a height of two feet.

For the New Orleans Corps of Engineers study, researchers compared the pros and cons of a vertical wall to the sloping grade of a levee in terms of waves topping them. Other studies challenge the stability of structures not only with regular waves but also with irregular waves coming from different directions and at different intervals and heights.

“You design it, put it in model condition, and see if it acts as designed,” Randall says. “In many cases, we find that they need to make modifications.”

“This is a unique tank in that we can have both waves and currents, and we can control the water depth,” Randall says.

An instrument carriage spans the wave basin, and a three-ton overhead crane services both it and the tow-dredge tank. Valves, pumps and weir gates are electronically controlled from a data-acquisition room. Operator control is manual or automatic using computers, and an observation well facilitates underwater viewing for both the basin and the tank. Both tanks may be viewed over the Internet by using two Web-based cameras. A motion-tracking system determines how much a structure rolls or moves up and down, resulting in a computerized picture and graph.

Of course, this wave pool typically tests 1/15–1/25-scale models rather than actual

“You must be able to test out your concepts for systems that are either very expensive to build or are protecting something that is very expensive. If you spend millions of dollars creating a structure, you want to be certain that it works.”

A small price to pay

The Haynes lab is a self-supporting facility, and clients pay $1,600 per day for its use.

But that amount is small compared with the fortune that could be lost with a faulty structure design.

“You must be able to test out your concepts for systems that are either very expensive to build or are protecting something that is very expensive,” Randall says. “If you spend millions of dollars creating a structure, you want to be certain that it works.”

Dr. Robert Randall

Civil Engineering Bauer Professor Director, Reta and Bill Haynes ’46 Coastal Engineering Laboratory & Center for Dredging Studies 979.845.4568 r-randall@tamu.edu

Photo ©Scott Goldsmith

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Left: B.G. Hindes carriage towing a cylinder submerged six feet below the water surface at a maximum speed of four knots. Right: Carriage with lower dredge ladder and articulating ladder with cutterhead. The four-inch suction inlet behind the cutterhead is connected to the dredge pump, and instrumentation includes pressure gauges, nuclear density meter, magnetic flowmeter, six load cells and cutter torque meter. The water current diffuser with concrete flow straightener is seen behind the vertical dredge ladder.

To illustrate his point, Randall uses the example of breakwaters, offshore barriers resting on the seafloor to protect harbors and other coastal areas from large waves.

“Breakwaters are protecting important infrastructures and vessels in port from something like hurricanes,” he says. “If their armor stones are not heavy enough, the waves will dislodge them and destroy the breakwater’s ability to protect the infrastructure and vessels it was designed to protect.”

The tow-dredge tank

When clients need to test anchors and similar seafloor structures, the Haynes lab’s towdredge tank can’t be beat. The 150-foot-long dredge tank lets clients test their structures either on a solid floor or through sand and mud contained in the subfloor sediment pit.

Federal agencies and offshore oil and gas companies use the tow-dredge tank to test anchors. Dredging companies and government groups use it for simulated oil-spill studies and to test actual dredging equipment.

“It’s a unique situation that we have here at Texas A&M. We have a degree-granting program, plus facilities that no one else has in the United States.”

The computer-controlled carriage resting on rails atop the tow-dredge tank can move at a speed of four knots and allows motion in three directions. Towed models can be attached to a vertical ladder, where load cells determine forces on the ladder. Other equipment measures density, speed, suction, discharge pressure, cutter-shaft torque and flow through the dredge pump. The lab’s axial flow pumps 62

can produce a maximum water flow of 35,000 gallons per minute.

Last year, the federal Minerals Management Service (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement) came to the Haynes lab with the problem of drilling rigs that came unanchored during hurricanes. With the aid of the dredge tank, and research conducted jointly with the University of Texas at Austin, the service successfully determined anchor performance.

Shell turned to the Haynes lab’s dredge tank to study the fastening of vortex suppression devices on drilling risers. Delmar Systems used it to test the effectiveness of its anchor models. Others research how erosion affects structure stability, such as bridge abutments.

Some dredging companies have replicated debris and sand conditions to settle lawsuits.

One study looked at how ship-channel dredging affects turtles.

Along with conducting research for clients and offering courses and graduate thesis projects for ocean engineering students, the Center for Dredging Studies offers professional training for those already in the field. With their three cutter-suction dredge simulators, center faculty members and industry collaborators teach the fundamentals of dredging, along with an annual Dredging Engineering Short Course.

“It’s a unique situation that we have here at Texas A&M,” Randall says. “We have a degreegranting program, plus facilities that no one else has in the United States.” O

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

www.civil.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

1,508 Students (Fall 2010)

• Coastal engineering and dredging

1,110 Undergraduate 398 Graduate

• Construction engineering and management

U.S. News & World Report Rankings (among public institutions)

7 Undergraduate 8 Graduate

60 Faculty 24 Professors 23 Associate professors 13 Assistant professors

1 National Academy of Engineering Member 21 Endowed Positions

5 Chairs 6 Professorships 6 Development professors 4 Faculty fellows

$19 Million Overall Budget 66 percent — research

• Environmental engineering • Geotechnical engineering • Infrastructure management and security • Materials engineering • Deepwater offshore engineering • Structural engineering • Transportation engineering • Water resources engineering • Micro and nanoscale mechanics

Research-driven consortium aims to attract manufacturing to border region, ease trade between Mexico and the U.S.

By Lesley Kriewald It started with a hunch: Companies who had moved their manufacturing operations from Mexico to China simply hadn’t done their calculations properly.

“We felt that many of these companies hadn’t captured all the supply chain costs associated with that move,” says Barry Lawrence, director of the Industrial Distribution Program at Texas A&M and the Leonard and Valerie Bruce Chair. “And as a result, many of them had made a mistake in relocating to China.”

Lawrence says that such a mistake is of course unfortunate for the manufacturers because it cost them money, but it’s even more unfortunate for the people in the communities who have lost those jobs. So he, Jorge Leon and colleagues in the Texas-Mexico Trade Corridor Consortium (TMEX) set out to study the problem.

TMEX brings together manufacturers, distributors, infrastructure and logistics providers, and governments to work together to understand how to optimize opportunities as the region expands. The consortium was 64

originally established to make the movement of materials in the Texas-Mexico border region more efficient. Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Northern Mexico has seen major growth as a regional manufacturing center. Mexican, American and European firms operate manufacturing plants, called maquiladoras, in the border region, particularly in the Mexican cities of Reynosa, Matamoros and Juarez.

“We felt that if we could develop a model that could give industry a more accurate depiction of the costs of serving the North American market, fewer companies would decide to move when they shouldn’t,” Lawrence says.

“And maybe many companies that had already moved to Asia would consider coming back to the region.”

The research partners worked to develop cost and return on investment, ROI, models to help companies decide where to locate.

Then the researchers tested those models for Mexico and the United States as opposed to China.

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Using the cost model, the team found that in many cases, if not most, Mexico was a better location for manufacturing operations serving North America than China was. The reasons: holding costs of inventory, high variability of transportation costs, constraints of the transportation system, and quality problems in the goods themselves.

The second approach, the ROI model, confirmed Mexico as a better location for manufacturing than China.

Lawrence says that other studies have confirmed the findings of the original TMEX study, and Mexico has surpassed China as a less expensive place to do manufacturing.

But the researchers made a surprise discovery.

“In every single cost category that we identified, except for labor, the U.S. was stronger than Mexico,” Lawrence says, “which meant that if you could bring about improvement in the labor costs in the U.S., the U.S. was the least expensive place to do manufacturing.

And we found that in many cases, the higher labor costs were justified and that manufacturing still should come back to the U.S.”

Other studies have confirmed the findings of the original TMEX study, and Mexico has surpassed China as a less expensive place to do manufacturing.

“So the TMEX study discovered that North America — and especially Mexico and the southwestern U.S. — is a very competitive location for manufacturing and actually comes out ahead of Asia in a great many cases, if not the majority of them.”

And during their studies, TMEX and Texas A&M’s supply chain experts have created tools and methodologies to help manufacturers and other companies determine where they should be located. The researchers are working with economic development groups in Texas and in Mexico, helping to attract employers to the region.

Dr. Barry Lawrence

Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution Leonard & Valerie Bruce Leadership Chair Director, Industrial Distribution Program Director, Global Supply Chain Laboratory Director, Thomas & Joan Read Center for Distribution Research & Education 979.845.1463 lawrence@entc.tamu.edu

Dr. Jorge Leon

PHOTO BY JIM LYLE, TTI COMMUNICATIONS

A view of the Mexican side of the Bridge of the Americas near El Paso, Texas, shows trucks traveling between Mexico and the United States.

Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution Allen-Bradley Professor Director, Manufacturing & Mechanical Engineering Technology Program 979.845.4993 leon@entc.tamu.edu

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Continual improvement

“We can make the argument that the TexasMexico area is a good area for manufacturers to be in, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need to continually improve,” Lawrence says.

To that end, Lawrence then looked for ways to involve more corporations with the consortium. Those companies could share problems with the researchers to solve. Solving those problems could teach the researchers about additional challenges companies were facing that the governments or other development agencies could help with to improve the region and make it even more competitive. Such issues include constraints on crossing the border and getting cities to work together to attract manufacturing rather than competing with one another.

“All those issues became important components here, and if we could demonstrate the difficulty corporations truly faced, that would give the government ideas on how they could go about attracting even more companies,” Lawrence says.

PHOTO BY DANIEL TIJERINA, TAMIU OFFICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS

The NAFTA “problem”

The team also set out to address criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) enacted by President George H.W. Bush. Many people blamed NAFTA for a loss of American jobs. Lawrence says that this challenge to NAFTA is a major problem for Texas because Texas has been the biggest beneficiary of NAFTA with huge international trade taking place through the state. Criticism of NAFTA is also unfair because the agreement has led to a good deal of reciprocal trade between the U.S. and Mexico.

“What we wanted to address here was making sure that NAFTA was properly respected and supported,” Lawrence says, “and that we paid attention to the right issues — such as the fact that manufacturing should come to this area. And that when it does come to this area, it’s beneficial for the U.S. and for Mexico, no matter which side of the border it lands on.”

TMEX members involved government and economic developers, as well as major corporations to bring new knowledge and new information that would in turn help government entities to make changes in order to make the border region more successful.

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“In every single cost category that we identified, except for labor, the U.S. was stronger than Mexico, which meant that if you could bring about improvement in the labor costs in the U.S., the U.S. was the least expensive place to do manufacturing.

And we found that in many cases, the higher labor costs were justified and that manufacturing still should come back to the U.S.” About 40 corporations joined the project at different stages and continue to work with TMEX, studying everything from transportation to manufacturing issues to finding suppliers to dealing with border-crossing challenges. Funding has come from the Economic Development Administration within the U.S. Department of Commerce; the Texas governor’s office; ProMexico; and the economic development agencies from Mexican states, including Nuevo León, Jalisco and Estado de Mexico.

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Sharing knowledge

To date, TMEX has held six meetings in Texas and Mexico, but plans are in place for global information sharing.

The first conference will probably be in Panama, possibly Brazil after that, and Lawrence says he is already planning for Barcelona in 2013.

“We have been asked to form a consortium of this nature for Central America,” Lawrence says. “We are also starting to form global conferences where we can take what we learn from TMEX — as well as a message about the economic development and the reasons why people should invest in the TMEX region — to these global conferences.”

“In the meantime, TMEX continues its research and progress, building ROI and a strong positive message about our relationship with Mexico. It’s demonstrating new ways for companies to examine their location decisions, and using all of that information to give a worldwide message about the value of investing in this region,” Lawrence says. O

Students learn by doing in Mexico program One of the many outcomes of TMEX is a study abroad program where students visit Mexico City and El Salvador to conduct a study on opening a distribution center in the area. The class received a $150,000 grant from Womack Machine Supply Co. to initiate the project and has since received a $300,000 endowment from Judy and Paul Andrews. These generous gifts allow the students to pay very little. The students visit multiple corporations in each city, meeting with economic developers, the secretaries of the economy for Mexico and Texas, and more. Thanks to TMEX, the class has a rich set of alliance partners that give the students an extremely rich educational experience. The class is limited to 20 students and fills almost as soon as it’s offered.

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by Lesley Kriewald

Developing and testing the next generation of emergency communications systems

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9-1-1. WH T

he Federal Communications Commission announced in August 2011 a five-step plan to upgrade the nation’s 9-1-1 emergency communications system to accept text messages, as well as images and videos.

Since 2004, Walt Magnussen and colleagues in Texas A&M’s Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center (ITEC) — including Ana Goulart, an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution — have been working to test this initiative to develop Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1). This new public safety and emergency communications system is based on Internet protocols (IP) so that the system runs on packetswitched data networks, such as the Internet.

ITEC was established in 2004 using its researchers’ expertise in areas associated with NG9-1-1, Internet telephony or voice-overInternet-protocol (VoIP), and network security. The Texas A&M center was the fourth such center established in the U.S. and the only one that’s still actively working on projects. ITEC’s work has been heavily supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) so that applications can be launched more quickly and cost-effectively, and over a single architecture.

“People are changing how they communicate, so we have to find ways to adapt our communications systems to these new ways of communicating.”

Internet telephony is hardware and software that enables people to use the Internet to make telephone or video conference calls.

Internet service providers (ISPs) and companies such as Skype and Vonage offer this service, which allows customers communicate cheaply and in real time with other users all over the world over the Internet.

With Internet telephony, a special phone called an IP phone converts the sender’s voice (or video or photo) into very short packets of coded information — 0s and 1s — and transmits that information through the Internet. An IP phone on the receiving end translates that information and plays the sender’s message.

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HAT’S YOUR But for computers to communicate with each other, Goulart says, there has to be a set of rules, called protocols, that govern that communication. With email, for instance, the SMTP protocol makes sure the same information can be conveyed and translated across different systems.

For instance, Goulart’s native language is Portuguese, but she can “decode” English. For her to communicate with students, she and her students must agree beforehand on which language they will use.

“This is how protocols work in general,” Goulart says. “For Internet telephony, there is a ‘signaling’ protocol that makes the computers agree on the type of voice and video codecs — encoders/decoders — that will be used before the call starts.”

The ITEC researchers have been working with the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) to develop these NG9-1-1 protocols. Currently, you can’t text a photo of a car accident to traditional 9-1-1, which is based on traditional circuit-based telephony — the creaky phone network of yesteryear. But you could transmit these messages if you were using Internet telephony. DoT officials say that these text, photo and video messages are critical to future transportation safety and mobility advances, so the initiative to develop NG9-1-1 has established a foundation for public emergency communications services in a wireless mobile society.

“People are changing how they communicate, so we have to find ways to adapt our communications systems to these new ways of communicating,” Goulart says.

Dr. Walter R. Magnussen Jr. Director, Internet2 Evalutation Center Director, Telecommunications Texas A&M University 979.845.5588 w-magnussen@tamu.edu

This NG9-1-1 system will allow not only for text, image and video messaging, but for telemetry as well. Information such as the speed of a vehicle at the time of the crash, whether the air bag deployed and how the car is oriented after the accident is useful to emergency responders. In the DoT’s proof-of-concept project, a collaboration with OnStar, the in-vehicle monitoring company was able to transfer a “call” from inside the vehicle to 9-1-1 and provide that status information to the call taker, who then sent the information to emergency responders.

“Another extension of this is medical information that needs to be conveyed,” Magnussen says. “For example, whether someone has asthma or is allergic to certain medications.”

Dr. Ana Goulart

Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution

Assistant Professor 979.845.4948 goulart@entc.tamu.edu

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An early grant from the commerce department helped ITEC researchers to formalize the architecture and develop early testbed equipment. With a proof-of-concept project sponsored by the DoT the researchers built the architecture and deployed it at five call centers across the U.S. This project, completed in 2008, paved the way for several testing events called Industry Collaboration Events, or ICE. To date, three ICEs have happened, with several more in planning.

“Texas A&M is viewed as one of the premier universities in emergency communications, which is where we want to be.”

But there are still issues with how to transition to IP-based emergency communications and how to make new and existing architecture work, Magnussen says.

The first issue is that the new architecture depends on the availability of broadband everywhere, which the United States does not have, Magnussen says. And unfortunately, he says, the United States is falling further behind the rest of the world in broadband deployment.

Second, there are “location acquisition” questions. The current 9-1-1 system recognizes a caller’s number and then finds that number in a database to give emergency responders a physical address.

But in IP-based communications, a caller can be anywhere, so how will responders know where to go?

And lastly, there is the issue of information security, because just like email and websites, Internet-based telephony is prone to attack or eavesdropping.

To address this last concern, the team has received NSF funding and is currently in the third year of a four-year project to create an NG9-1-1 security test bed. Goulart heads this portion of the research, with collaborators from the University of North Texas and Columbia University.

Also of concern is the existence of wireless “silos,” where separate groups of responders — police and fire departments, for example — have their own communications systems and can’t communicate with each other. So they all respond to the same emergency. Building an information exchange for first responders will help to create that information link.

“Texas A&M is viewed as one of the premier universities in emergency communications, which is where we want to be in terms of funding opportunities,” Magnussen says. O

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etidweb.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

901 Students (Fall 2010) 873 Undergraduate Students

Electronics & Telecommunications Program

• Robotic systems and smart vehicles

28 Graduate Students

39 Faculty

9 Professors

4 Associate professors

• Embedded systems software and hardware • Electronic device and systems testing • RFID and wireless sensor systems • Building and industrial automation • Mobile computing systems

14 Assistant professors

• Electronic product development and prototyping

12 Nontenured/non–tenure track

• Multimedia over IP and integrated services

6 Endowed Positions 2 Chairs 3 Professorships 1 Faculty fellow

$10.5 Million Overall Budget 25 percent — research

• Medical instrumentation and robotics

Industrial Distribution • Distribution best practices • Distributor profitability • Industrial sales • Supply chain management • Inventory optimization • Sales and marketing optimization • Pricing management

Manufacturing & Mechanical Program • Automation

• Manufacturing processes and materials • Manufacturing systems • Applied mechanics • Thermal sciences • Educational research 73

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NOVEL

nanostubble

SEPARATES DESIRABLE FROM UNDESIRABLE. If you consider that a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide, a five-nanometerwide hole doesn’t seem very big. But it gives Daniel Shantz all the room he needs to work his magic.

That “magic” is the science of organic chemistry that occurs inside each microscopic pore of a spongelike membrane that Shantz is working to develop — a membrane with the potential to help alleviate the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Shantz, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, works in materials development, with a particular focus on energy. His latest project, a National Science Foundation– funded effort, is aimed at developing materials that can selectively remove valuable components, such as sugars, from the complex mixtures produced from biomass conversion.

These compounds can then be blended with conventional fuels or used as alternative fuels after further processing.

Much as for crude oil, current approaches to biomass conversion result in a crude mixture containing many compounds. Many of these compounds (e.g., water and acids) must be removed before the mixture can be rendered usable, Shantz explains. But unlike crude oil, for which refineries exist to achieve this process, separation technology is relatively nonexistent for bio-oils and cellulose hydrolysis mixtures, Shantz says.

“The chemical nature of these mixtures is very different from those primarily found in current refineries and can’t really be used ‘as is,’” Shantz says. “Current approaches to biomass conversion, such as cellulose hydrolysis or biomass pyrolysis, result in very complex mixtures. The question then becomes, ‘How do I get the valuable compounds out in an efficient

way and leave the undesirable stuff behind? If there is 20 percent of something of value, can I separate it out effectively so that I can blend it into existing fuel pools?’”

“Think of these membranes as tiny sponges.

Within each of the holes in these sponges, we’re growing molecule trees, and we can grow different types of trees depending on what we want them to separate.”

In pursuit of that question, Shantz is developing a new membrane that can function as a filter of sorts for these biomass mixtures.

Typical filters do their job on the basis of size, similar to how a strainer drains water from spaghetti while retaining the pasta, but Shantz’s nanoscale filter relies on chemistry to achieve the desired separations.

Using a ceramic membrane that contains many pores, each five nanometers wide, Shantz is inserting branched layers of organic molecules within each microscopic hole. These organic molecules, known as dendrimers, are grown off the surface of the membrane and attached within each pore by chemical bonds, Shantz explains. It is this “nanostubble” that goes to work, absorbing or binding the molecules Shantz wants to separate.

“Think of these membranes as tiny sponges,” Shantz says. “Within each of the holes in these sponges, we’re growing molecule trees, and we can grow different types of trees depending on what we want them to separate.

“So instead of sieving based on size, we are looking at achieving a solubility-based separation. Think of the old adage ‘like attracts like.’

In other words, I have a molecule that is much more soluble in this pore. What that effectively

Dr. Daniel Shantz

Chemical Engineering Associate Professor Ray Nesbitt Development Professor III 979.845.3492 shantz@che.tamu.edu

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does is partition it across the membrane.

These molecules absorb in and then the pores become full of them. These desired elements go into the membrane much more readily and will then move through.”

It’s an innovative approach to what Shantz calls a “horrendous separation problem” that the petrochemical industry faces as they search for ways to make renewables a larger percentage of their feedstocks and do so by using their existing facilities.

“We are trying to design structure and chemistry on short-length scales,” Shantz says.

“By changing things very deliberately on the nanometer scale with some organic chemistry, we believe we can make membranes that will sort out a group of molecules if we do the chemistry one way, another group of molecules if we do the chemistry another way.”

That flexibility of the chemistry is something Shantz says adds to the potential attractiveness of this approach. In addition to being less energy-intensive than traditional separation techniques such as distillation, a membranebased separation technique offers several methods for achieving separation. Employing

“By changing things very deliberately on the nanometer scale with some organic chemistry, we believe we can make membranes that will sort out a group of molecules if we do the chemistry one way, another group of molecules if we do the chemistry another way.” a solubility-based approach, Shantz could design a dendrimer so that specific molecules of a mixture will react with it more strongly than other molecules, solubilizing and eventually passing through the membrane. In contrast, Shantz is also working to design membranes that can bind up certain components of a mixture, such as in metal sequestration, which removes lead from water.

It’s all part of a solution that Shantz says he views as a viable, intermediate-term answer to shifting the fuel pool away from petroleum.

Although scientists’ long-term goal is to develop processes that break down biomass into only the desired compounds, that has not yet happened, Shantz explains. For now, the ability to glean valuable chemical compounds from these complex mixtures represents a significant step toward a productive transitional period in the nation’s adoption of alternative energy, he says.

Dr. Shantz installs a membrane that will be tested for separating carbon dioxide and nitrogen as part of a Dow Chemical–supported project.

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“We are using chemistry to engineer structure and function at the nanometer-length scale, and by doing that we hope to do separations that people can’t do,” Shantz says.

“We can make things that have engineering importance.” O

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che.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

879 Students (Fall 2010)

• Biomedical/biomolecular

755 Undergraduate

• Complex fluids

124 Graduate

• Computational chemical engineering

U.S. News & World Report Rankings

• Environmental

(among public institutions)

17 Graduate

• Materials • Microelectronics

27 Faculty

• Microfluidics

14 Professors

• Modeling and simulation

5 Associate professors

• Nanotechnology

8 Assistant professors

• Process safety

1 National Academy of Engineering Member

• Process systems engineering

15 Endowed Positions

• Thermodynamics

3 Chairs 6 Professorships 5 Development professors 1 Faculty fellow

$15.3 Million Overall Budget 74 percent — research

• Reaction engineering

SYSTEMS APPROACH TO NUCLEAR ENERGY by Dedra Nevill

Taking a holistic view to help shape the next-generation nuclear power plant To improve car performance, you need to examine how all the parts work together.

That same holistic system approach is how nuclear engineer Pavel Tsvetkov is helping to shape the next-generation nuclear power plant.

By looking at the entire reactor system and developing predictive simulation models, engineers like Tsvetkov can find ways to upgrade existing power plants and to design more affordable and safer future nuclear power plants.

Tsvetkov focuses his research efforts on developing system methods for predictive simulations of complex engineered systems. This integrated systems approach, or “system thinking,” is the key approach in science-based efforts toward sustainable nuclear energy.

Tsvetkov says he believes the integrated systems method is the foundation of a truly robust design development approach that is necessary to upgrade existing power plants. This approach also will help in designing future nuclear power plants to withstand catastrophic environmental phenomena (such as the recent tsunami that devastated the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan) and serve as unlimited energy sources without harming the environment.

“As a researcher, I love the excitement of scientific discovery and engineering development,” Tsvetkov says. “The focus on integration and systems allows us to advance the current state of nuclear energy systems designs.”

The value of looking at the entire reactor system is to develop consistencies between all the components of the energy system. His research explores the multidisciplinary aspects of a nuclear energy system, including fuel cycles, energy generation equipment, safety components and nuclear waste.

To do this, Tsvetkov’s research includes a combination of computational simulations and laboratory experiments that incorporate a variety of nuclear engineering disciplines.

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Dr. Pavel V. Tsvetkov Nuclear Engineering Associate Professor 979.845.7078 tsvetkov@tamu.edu

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“As a researcher, I love the excitement of scientific discovery and engineering development. The focus on integration and systems allows us to advance the current state of nuclear energy systems designs.”

“By simulating system behavior, we are able to look at the system design aspects rather than limiting ourselves within components of the nuclear reactor,” Tsvetkov says. “It gives a clearer picture of how each component of the system will interact with each other, playing in concert as a system.”

Hybrid applications and roles of these SMRs require evaluations and development of methods not only for reactors but also for power modules, plants and mixed systems that make up both large power units and SMRs, as well as dedicated systems for waste management in various fuel cycle scenarios.

“We want to improve the quality of our life and make sure that our children have a secure and prosperous future.”

“Of course, innovative SMRs being near-term systems does not preclude but instead facilitates our interests in advanced energy systems that go far beyond our current and tomorrow needs,” Tsvetkov says. “We are active in our quest for efficient direct energy conversion systems for terrestrial and space applications, as well as various advanced hybrid systems for power and waste management, including combinations of fission and external neutron sources such as fusion and accelerators.”

One aspect that Tsvetkov is looking at is smallscale nuclear power, or small modular reactors (SMRs), which are a part of a new generation of nuclear reactors and are defined by their size, electric output capacities and inherently robust safety systems. SMRs also require little maintenance.

SMRs (as well as the newest generations of nuclear reactors, Generation III+ and Generation IV) include inherent safety features intended to avoid a disaster such as what happened in Japan. These small reactors are designed so that a distributed network of them could be built instead of one large 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor. Theoretically, the network would be much less susceptible to damage from natural disasters or accidents. In fact, interest in SMRs has grown since Japan’s Fukushima incident.

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Although nuclear energy currently generates 14 percent of the world’s electricity, the World Nuclear Association says demand is increasing twice as fast as overall energy use and is likely to rise 76 percent by 2030. Technological advancements paired with ongoing research such as Tsvetkov’s will continue to advance nuclear energy’s place as part of solving the world’s energy needs.

“We want to improve the quality of our life and make sure that our children have a secure and prosperous future,” Tsvetkov says. O

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

nuclear.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

462 Students (Fall 2010)

Reactor Physics & Computational Science

331 Undergraduate 131 Graduate

U.S. News & World Report Rankings (among public institutions)

2 Undergraduate 3 Graduate

18 Faculty 8 Professors 7 Associate professors 3 Assistant professors

2 Endowed Positions 2 Professorships

External Research Funds (FY 2010) $9.1 million in expenditures $15.0 million in awards

Affiliated Institutes

• Radiation transport methods for neutrons, photons and charged particles • Multiphysics simulations • Uncertainty quantification and risk assessment

Nuclear Security Research

• Safeguards systems and detection • Proliferation-resistant advanced energy systems and fuel cycles • Treaty verification and nonproliferation policy • Nuclear terrorism and homeland security technologies

Power Engineering

• Flow visualization in complex reactor geometries • Nuclear reactor safety • Experimental studies of multiphase flows • Small reactors and very-high-temperature reactors

Nuclear Materials Research

• Radiation-tolerant materials for nuclear systems • Advanced nuclear fuels and fabrication methods • High-level waste form development

Health & Medical Physics

• Radiation detection and image reconstruction • Radiobiology

• Center for Large-scale Scientific Simulations (CLASS) • Institue for National Security Education & Research (INSER) • Nuclear Science Center • Nuclear Security Science & Policy Institute (NSSPI) • Nuclear Power Institute • Space Engineering Research Center

The famous father–son Mexican architect team Logretta+Logretta designed the Texas A&M Engineering Building. Construction of the building took one year and 10 months to complete and cost $150 million. The Texas A&M Engineering Building is more than 595,000 square feet and consists of a research wing and an academic wing.

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esearch spending has topped $577,000 per faculty member, there’s a new master’s program and the school has received more than $100 million in research grants since 2003, but that’s only part of the story at Texas A&M University at Qatar. Here, in a region that straddles the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, some of the brightest young minds are looking beyond the petroleum age.

In 2001, Texas A&M became one of six U.S. universities invited by Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development to establish branches in Qatar.

All six schools are located in Education City, a 14-square-kilometer campus near the capital city of Doha. Texas A&M University at Qatar opened in 2003.

Each university — Weill Cornell Medical College, for example, or Georgetown School of Foreign Service ­— provides its own area of excellence. For its part, Texas A&M offers undergraduate degrees in chemical, electrical, mechanical, and petroleum engineering.

“This fall we’re adding a master’s degree in chemical engineering,” says Mark Weichold, the university’s dean and CEO. “Qatar Foundation has placed the pursuit of knowledge at the center of its society and economy.

The introduction of our master’s program is the start of a new era for Texas A&M University at Qatar and for the State’s thriving industrial and commercial sectors.”

Of the 450 undergraduates in engineering, 43 percent are from Qatar, with roughly equal numbers of men and women.

“I’m very proud of the number of Qataris we have in our program, and of the number of female students,” Weichold says. “Since we opened, this campus has produced more than 200 engineers. About 100 of those are from Qatar, and half of the Qataris are women.”

The university’s facilities and operating expenses are paid by Qatar Foundation.

Research grants come from Qatar Foundation, corporations and private institutions. The result is a world-class university with unique opportunities for its diverse student body.

“With 450 students and a faculty of 75, the smaller classes have even attracted engineering students from College Station,” Weichold says. “Since the courses are identical, students can come for a semester or two without interrupting their degree plans.”

“The beauty of this exercise is the mixing of various cultures. That’s the best way to understand geopolitics.

The friendships the students have develped are transforming for these young men and women.”

The quality of the undergraduate and graduate programs are exactly the same as they are in College Station. Beyond that, students from both campuses benefit from collaboration on an international scale.

In 2011, for example, 10 senior chemical engineering students from College Station and 10 from the Qatar campus participated in the International Design Projects competition.

Last year’s corporate sponsor was ExxonMobil.

This year Fluor sponsored the event and based the design challenge on one of its recent engineering projects. Divided into groups of four, each team designed a portion of an aromatics processing facility. The challenge was to work together to create an integrated solution. It gave students the same collaborative experience they will soon have as professional engineers, including trips between Qatar and College Station to meet with colleagues.

Dr. Mark H. Weichold

Texas A&M University at Qatar Dean and Chief Executive Officer +974.4423.0012 mark.weichold@qatar.tamu.edu

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“The beauty of this exercise is the mixing of various cultures,” says Kem Bennett, who was vice chancellor and dean of engineering during the establishment of the branch campus in Qatar. “In my opinion, that’s the best way to understand geopolitics. The friendships the students have developed are transforming for these young men and women. Many have said to me that it was the most wonderful experience of their life to have been immersed in another culture.”

Students at the Qatar campus also benefit from working directly on some of the largest engineering projects in the world. In a current research program with RasGas, the world’s second-largest producer of liquefied natural gas, researchers in the Petroleum Engineering program are investigating an accurate, nonintrusive process that will allow RasGas engineers to detect the presence of water in natural gas pipelines.

“I believe that our work on the RasGas project and the expertise of our faculty and research teams is contributing to Qatar’s growth and economic expansion,” says Kenneth Hall, the university’s associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies. “That is reflected in the extraordinary amount of research funding we receive.”

Through the end of 2010, Texas A&M University at Qatar had some $70 million in external research grants. In May 2011, it was awarded another $27.5 million to fund 30 new initiatives. The increased funding will open more areas of specialization, including process systems and environmental engineering, safety, catalysis and fuels.

“Our new graduate program was the missing piece of the puzzle,” Hall says. “With that in place, I think that Texas A&M University at Qatar is just now hitting its stride.” O

“In the desert, where water is more precious than oil, water and energy are pieces of the same puzzle,” says Patrick Linke, chemical engineering associate professor. He is also the managing director and co-founder of the Qatar Sustainable Water and Energy Utilization Initiative (QWE), a visionary research project that will help shape the future of Qatar and its neighbors.

“The QWE is one of our boldest and most important research initiatives yet,” Linke says. “Since 2008, we have focused on regional water and energy issues, working with stakeholders here in Qatar, and with an industry consortium in a mix of basic and applied research.”

One of the main projects is desalination, the removal of salt from sea water. Since the need exists in all desert regions, the research at Texas A&M is likely to have a much wider impact.

A related research program is looking at water management and energy efficiency in industrial zones.

“You cannot talk about water without energy,” Linke says. “It takes a lot of energy to process the water, and the other way around, as well. That means we must examine the problem from all angles. Our job is to always look at the bigger picture.”

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www.qatar.tamu.edu

Quick Facts

Research Areas

446 Students (Fall 2010)

• Environmental issues

186 Qatari

• Solar reactor technology

260 Non-Qatari

207 Graduates since 2008 110 Qatari

97 Non-Qatari

73 Faculty

• Sustainable water and energy utilization • Advanced water treatment technologies • Wireless communications systems • Chemical process safety

10 Chemical engineering

• Petroleum reservoir studies

10 Electrical and computer engineering

• Mathematical modeling

13 Mechanical engineering

• Machinery and controls

7 Petroleum engineering

18 Liberal arts

• Telecommunications

15 Science

• Transportation and roads

$96 Million in Current Research Funding

• Electric power generation

17 Chemical engineering projects 36 Electrical and computer engineering projects 33 Mechanical engineering projects 26 Petroleum engineering projects 24 Science projects

3 Liberal arts projects

Texas A&M Engineering Building More than 595,000 square feet Part of Education City campus in Doha, Qatar Research wing and academic wing Contains 30 teaching labs and 32 research labs

• Distribution and machinery • Chemistry • Physics

Dwight Look College of Engineering Facts

more than

11,000

12 departments

students ASEE RANKINGS

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION, RELEASED JULY 2011

RANKED 7 IN GRADUATE PROGRAMS AND 9TH IN UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS AMONG PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS TH

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT

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3 Undergraduate enrollment 7 Engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded 4 Bachelor’s degrees awarded to women 6 Bachelor’s degrees awarded to Hispanics 6 Graduate enrollment 13 Engineering master’s degrees awarded 10 Engineering doctoral degrees awarded 4 Tenured/tenure-track faculty members 5 Women tenured/tenure-track faculty 3 Hispanic tenured/tenure-track faculty 2 Research expenditures 7 Highest ratio of research expenditures to doctoral degree recipients ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Student News Brown Foundation gives $15 million to draw stellar freshmen to Texas A&M A $15 million gift from the Craig and Galen Brown Foundation of Houston aims to make Texas A&M even more attractive to incoming freshmen of the highest academic caliber. This most recent gift (annual donations made through the Texas A&M Foundation over a 50-year period) significantly expands the Brown Foundation Scholars program.

“The Brown Foundation’s goal is to attract those students who are academically gifted and very involved in school organizations as well as community and volunteer activities. These students are individuals who will make a significant difference now and in the future,” said Craig C. Brown, the foundation’s president and chairman of the board.

Since 1992 the Brown Foundation has offered fouryear scholarships to more than 125 high-achieving freshmen in coordination with the university’s Honors and Undergraduate Research office to recruit stellar high school graduates, predominantly National Merit Scholars. Texas A&M ranks among the top 10 institutions in enrolling new National Merit Scholars and is tops in Texas and second nationally among all public universities, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

The Brown Foundation’s latest gift is expected to benefit up to 70 students annually across the Dwight Look College of Engineering, College of Science and College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. The selected students will receive a four-year scholarship from the Brown Foundation as well as scholarships provided by Honors and Undergraduate Research and their respective colleges.

Texas A&M hosts 2011 National Student Steel Bridge Competition Texas A&M University hosted the 2011 ASCE/AISC National Student Steel Bridge Competition May 20–21. The competition featured 550 participants from 48 universities, including Texas A&M. The competition requires the university teams to design and construct a 1/10-scale model bridge intended to cross a river valley, giving civil engineering students hands-on experience with designing and building steel bridges.

Nuclear engineering student elected to ANS board Will Sames, who completed his bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering in 2011, has been elected the student director of the American Nuclear Society’s board of directors. As student director, Sames will represent student members from across the nation, acting as their voice on the committee.

Sames was elected by fellow student national members of the organization and will serve a two-year term.

Texas A&M’s Eta Kappa Nu wins Outstanding Chapter Award The Gamma Mu Chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, the Electrical and Computer Engineering honor society, was named winner of the Outstanding Chapter Award. The award is based on the contents and description of chapter activities that are contained in each chapter’s annual report. Most important are activities to improve professional development, to raise instructional and institutional standards, to encourage scholarship and creativity, to provide a public service and generally to further the established goals of the organization. This is the 10th year the Gamma Mu Chapter has won the award.

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Student News Aggies place seventh in submarine races A team of Aggies placed seventh overall at the 11th International Human Powered Submarine Races in the towing tank at the David Taylor Model Basin in Bethesda, Md., June 26 through July 1. The Aggies — from the Ocean Engineering Program in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering — competed in the field of 28 submarines with a top speed of 5.133 knots. The submarine speed was measured as the submarine passed through timing gates spaced 10 meters apart located about two-thirds of the way down the 100-meter racecourse.

The 17-person submarine team competed against other universities in the United States and abroad. The winning team at the races was Florida Atlantic University, with a speed of 6.89 knots.

Texas A&M Formula SAE team wins 2011 hybrid car contest A team of more than 30 Aggies won the 2011 International Formula Hybrid Competition at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Louden, N.H., in May. The Aggies were also recognized by GM with one of three Best Engineered Hybrid Systems Awards. The team won the Autocross event and was the first team to complete their two — electric only and unlimited — acceleration runs. The racecar was designed and built by engineering students at Texas A&M for the Formula SAE student design competition. Texas A&M has a winning history in the Formula SAE contest: The car and team won the hybrid contest in 2009 on their first try and placed second in the 2010 hybrid contest. Texas A&M teams have taken part in the international Formula SAE competition since 1999 and won that competition in 2000, 2006 and 2007.

MMET students place first, third in design contest Two teams of students from the Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology (MMET) Program won top prizes at the international Second Annual Design and Manufacturing competition, organized by the American Society for Engineering Education and Society of Manufacturing Engineers in Vancouver in June. Seniors Andrew Stuckey and Veronica Del Toro, under advice of faculty members Wayne Hung and Nina Robson, led their teams to capture the first and third prizes, respectively, when demonstrating their handassisting devices for people with disabilities.

The students had to apply the knowledge they have acquired in their design, machining, planning and communication courses in the MMET program at Texas A&M. This project was an opportunity for the students to see how all their coursework fits into project development, design, manufacture and testing for a practical and much-needed application.

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Student News Chemical engineering graduate student Pham awarded best paper for sustainable engineering

Biomedical engineering students receive SPIE scholarships in optics and photonics

Viet Pham, a graduate student in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has been named one of two winners of the 2011 Sustainable Engineering Forum Best Student Paper Award, presented by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). The paper for which Pham has been recognized is co-written by Professors Mark Holtzapple and Mahmoud El-Halwagi and resulted in the article “Techno-Economic Analysis of Biomass to Fuel via the MixAlco Process.” That article appears in the Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology. Pham’s paper details an integrated view for the synthesis, simulation, design and economic analysis for a process that converts various types of biomass into mixed alcohols that can be used directly as biofuels or converted to liquid transportation fuels.

Tony Akl (pictured right) and Ryan Shelton, both Ph.D. students in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, have been selected to receive a scholarship from the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). Akl is a member of the Optical Biosensing Lab working under the supervision of Professor Gerard L. Coté, and his research focuses on optical sensing and diagnostics. Specifically, he is working on implantable sensors to monitor perfusion and oxygenation in implanted livers in the early post-transplant period. Shelton works in the Laboratory for Optical and Molecular Imaging under the supervision of Assistant Professor Brian Applegate.

His primary research area is high-resolution molecular imaging using photoacoustic microscopy, and his research also includes various applications of optical coherence tomography.

Chemical engineering graduate student Noureldin awarded Eastman Fellowship Mohamed Noureldin, a graduate student in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has been awarded the Eastman Chemical Engineering Graduate Fellowship from the Eastman Chemical Group. Noureldin, who completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, is co-advised by Professors Mahmoud El-Halwagi and Nimir Elbashir. Eastman fellowships are awarded on the basis of scholarly productivity and excellence in graduate studies and are intended to promote enrichment, growth and development in engineering students. Each includes a monetary stipend.

Electrical engineering undergrad awarded prestigious fellowship Matthew Johnson, a senior in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was selected to receive the National Excellence Fellowship (NEF) award. Johnson received a Level 1 NEF award, which will provide $40,000 annually for four years. The fellowship award will be reviewed annually for renewal of the second, third and fourth years. Participants are expected to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching and innovations in engineering and technology. These individuals will be crucial to maintaining and advancing the nation’s technological infrastructure and national security as well as contributing to the economic well-being of society at large.

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Student News Texas A&M Engineering students take second in national cybersecurity contest

Texas A&M took second place in the Sixth National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) in San Antonio in April 2011. Texas A&M team members were Mark Browning (captain), William Chen, Andrew Chin, Nik Johnson, Matthew Mullins, Robert “Red” Schumacher, Kyle Willmon and Eric Wood.

All team members are from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The CCDC competitions are similar to other cyber defense competitions, yet unique, because they focus on protecting the network infrastructure of a fictional business with email, websites, data files and users. The teams are scored on how well they perform in correcting network problems, performing business tasks and protecting their networks from hostile activity.

Electrical engineering students win Texas Energy Primer Challenge A group of students from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University took first place in the Texas Energy Primer Challenge sponsored by Power Across Texas in Austin in January. Ojay Anyaeji, Samantha Castillo and Amulaya Karavadi, under the guidance of Robert Balog, took first place in the Texas Energy Primer Challenge with their presentation on solar photovoltaic energy systems.

Power Across Texas sponsored the Texas Energy Primer Challenge by challenging teams from Texas A&M, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Arlington and Texas Tech to develop primers in key areas of energy: Solar Photovoltaic Energy (Texas A&M), Smart Grids (UT) and Energy Storage (Texas Tech).

Aggies win 2011 Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards Two nuclear engineering students won awards in the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2011 Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards competition. Adam Parkison, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, has been awarded a first-place prize in the category of Nuclear Fuels. His award-winning research paper, “Hydride Formation Process for the Powder Metallurgical Recycle of Zircaloy from Used Nuclear Fuel,” was published in the journal Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A in January 2011. William Sames, a master’s degree student in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, has been awarded a prize in the Undergraduate category. His award-winning research paper, “Voloxidation Modeling and Code Development,” was presented at the 2011 Waste Management Symposium in February. The research was performed and the paper was written while Sames was an undergraduate at Texas A&M.

Aerospace engineering launches new airship activity at Texas A&M A new airship activity launched this summer in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Lighter-than-air (LTA) systems generate lift force principally by using sufficient volume of a lighter-than-air gas, such as helium.

Heavier-than-air (HTA) systems, on the other hand, generate lift by a relative motion between the wings or rotor blades and ambient air, consuming a large amount of fuel. Texas A&M aerospace engineering students are becoming familiar with the airship operation controls with some indoor flying.

The pictured aerostat, measuring 5 feet by 11 feet, will next carry a light payload consisting of a camera, wireless transmitter and a smartphone to simulate an operational mission.

Larger airships with real payloads can contribute to several missions, including disaster response, homeland security and communications relay, to name a few.

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Student News Two graduate students win Schlumberger fellowships Zakia Asad, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Si Gou, a Ph.D. student in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, have received fellowships from the Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future program. Asad is part of the Telecommunications, Controls and Signal Processing Group under the direction of Deepa Kundur. Gou is part of the Ecohydrology Research Group in the civil engineering department’s Environmental and Water Resources Engineering Division. Her advisor is Gretchen Miller. The Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future fellowships are awarded to female academics in science and engineering and provide funding for advanced graduate study at top universities.

Electrical engineering student wins Best Student Paper Award at IEEE conference Hemasundar Mohan Geddada, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, won a Best Student Paper Award at the 2011 Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Seoul, Korea. Geddada — with Professor Jose SilvaMartinez and Stewart S. Taylor, a senior principal engineer at Intel Corp. — won the award and a cash prize for the paper, “Inductorless Wideband CMOS LNAs with Nonlinearity Cancellation.” Geddada is working towards his Ph.D. in electrical engineering under the advisement of Silva-Martinez in the Analog and Mixed Signal group. His research interests include highly linear radio front ends and low-power, high-efficiency data converters. Since 2009 he has been working on SRC-sponsored low-power, highly efficient sigma-delta converters at Texas A&M.

Computer science graduate student receives AI accolades Graduate student Timothy Mann from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering was chosen to participate in the National Science Foundation’s East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program (NSF EAPSI). Mann worked with Minho Lee at Kyungpook National University in Daegu, South Korea, on improving near and far stereovisual depth estimation of objects. Mann was also invited to attend the prestigious AAAI Doctoral Consortium, which allows the top Ph.D. students in artificial intelligence to interact with other top students, scholars and professionals within this field.

Petroleum engineering student honored by Engineers Without Borders Grady Meloy, a senior in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering and president of Texas A&M’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), was awarded the 2011 Engineers Without Borders-USA Student Founders Award at the recent International Conference for EWB-USA held in Louisville, Ky., in March. The mission of EWB is to facilitate collaboration, exchange information and assist its member chapters, which apply to become part of the association in order to help poor communities in their respective countries and create a new generation of global engineers.

NSF awards graduate fellowships to Texas A&M students 5 Fellowship recipients

Renee McVay........................................................ Chemical Engineering Courtney Shell.................................................. Mechanical Engineering Kathryn Louise West....................................... Biomedical Engineering Thomas Stephen Wilems............................... Biomedical Engineering Mei Zhong Zhan............................................................... Bioengineering

6 Honorable mentions

Jory London Denny.........................................Computer Science Jennifer Holm*........................................ Biomedical Engineering Jason Matthew Knight............................... Electrical Engineering Scott Parker Kolodziej................................Chemical Engineering Kasra Mehron Manavi*....................................Computer Science Arpan Satsangi........................................ Biomedical Engineering *Earned undergraduate elsewhere, pursuing graduate degrees at Texas A&M

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Leadership Dwight Look College of Engineering Administration ADMINISTRATION*

DEPARTMENT HEADS

Dr. G. Kemble Bennett, P.E.

Dr. Dimitris C. Lagoudas, P.E.

VICE CHANCELLOR AND DEAN OF ENGINEERING DIRECTOR, TEXAS ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT STATION HAROLD J. HAYNES DEAN’S CHAIR PROFESSOR

Dr. N.K. Anand, P.E.

DEPARTMENT OF AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Dr. Stephen W. Searcy, P.E. (Interim)

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING

EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN JAMES M. AND ADA SUTTON FORSYTH PROFESSOR IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Dr. Gerard L. Coté

Dr. Dennis O’Neal

ARTIE MCFERRIN DEPARTMENT OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH

Dr. Jo Howze

SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC PROGRAMS FORD MOTOR COMPANY DESIGN PROFESSOR I IN ENGINEERING

Dr. Robin Autenrieth, P.E.

DEPARTMENT OF BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Dr. Charles Glover, P.E. (Interim) Dr. John M. Niedzwecki, P.E.

ZACHRY DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL ENGINEERING

Dr. Duncan M. “Hank” Walker

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR GRADUATE PROGRAMS A.P. AND FLORENCE WILEY PROFESSOR III IN CIVIL ENGINEERING

Dr. Costas Georghiades, P.E.

Dr. César Malavé, P.E.

Dr. Walter W. Buchanan, P.E.

ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ENGINEERING

Dr. Ray W. James, P.E.

ASSISTANT DEAN FOR ENGINEERING STUDENT SERVICES

Deena Wallace

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION

Dr. César Malavé, P.E. (Interim)

DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

ASSOCIATE VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ADMINISTRATION AND LEGAL AFFAIRS

Dr. Jerald Caton, P.E. (Interim)

Carol Huff

Dr. Raymond J. Juzaitis

Tiffiny Britton

Dr. Stephen A. Holditch, P.E.

ASSISTANT VICE CHANCELLOR FOR FINANCE ASSISTANT VICE CHANCELLOR FOR EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT OF NUCLEAR ENGINEERING HAROLD VANCE DEPARTMENT OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

Marilyn Martell

ASSISTANT VICE CHANCELLOR FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Magda Lagoudas

DIRECTOR, ENGINEERING STUDENT SERVICES AND ACADEMIC PROGRAMS * Through Aug. 31, 2011.

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Leadership Texas A&M Engineering Advisory Council Mark Albers ’79

Senior Vice President Exxon Mobil Corp.

Debra Anglin ’77

President and CEO Pate Engineers Inc.

Wiljo (Joe) Asiala ’77

President, Mid-Michigan Innovation Center CEO, MI Tech+

Dr. Dionel Aviles ’53 President

Aviles Engineering Corp.

Phillip D. (David) Bairrington ’78 General Manager, Nonconventional Resources Conoco Phillips, Retired

J.L. Frank ’58

Marathon Oil, Retired

Mike Greene

Vice Chairman Energy Future Holdings

William Hanna ’58

Koch Industries, Retired

H. Darryl Heath ’84 Partner Accenture

J.R. Jones ’69

President Jones and Carter Inc.

Janeen Judah ’81

Rockwell International, Retired

General Manager-Houston Gas Assets Chevron Africa and Latin America E&P South Africa Business Unit

Jimmie Bratton ’63

Tim Leach ’82

Dr. W.M. (Mike) Barnes ’64

Applied Research Associates, Retired

Clay Bright ’78

Owner/Partner Bright and Company

Craig Brown ’75

President and CEO Bray International Inc.

Tom Cogan ’77

Director, Airplane Product Dev. Boeing Commercial Airplanes

Ralph Cox ’53

Chairman and CEO Concho Resources Inc.

Ken LeSuer ’57

Halliburton, Retired

President ADM Global Resources

Arthur McFerrin Jr. ’65

Thomas Fisher ’66

Jeffrey Miller ’88

Chairman and CEO Clark Construction Group LLC

Dr. Joe Fowler ’68

President Stress Engineering Services

Don Vardeman ’75

Chairman and CEO The Plank Companies Inc.

Mark Potter ’86

President KMCO Inc.

Vice President, Worldwide Facilities Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

Dr. Ronnie Ward ’73

Mark Puckett ’73

James Wiley Sr. ’46

Chevron Energy Technology, Retired

David Reed ’83

Texas Instruments Inc., Retired

The Honorable Debbie Riddle

Consultant

Delbert Whitaker ’65

Texas Instruments, Retired Partner Wiley Brothers Investment Builders

Walter Williams ’49

Director Cheniere Energy Inc.

Texas State Representative

Dr. J. Stephen Rottler ’80

Chairman and CEO Energy XXI

Vice President Engineering, Data Acquisition and Distributed I/O National Instruments

John A. (Jack) Scott ’73 President Applied Systems and Technolgoy Transfer

Christopher Seams ’84

Senior Vice President, Gulf of Mexico Halliburton

Executive Vice President Sales, Marketing and Operations Cypress Semiconductor

Erle Nye ’59

Dennis Segers ’75

Chairman Emeritus TXU Corp.

SBC Communications, Retired

Senior Vice President and General Manager Industry Standard Servers and Software Hewlett-Packard Company

Kevin Schultz ’91

Mark Fischer ’72

Peter Forster ’63

Michael Plank ’83

Lisa Mahlmann ’84

A. Dwain Mayfield ’59

President El Paso Exploration & Production

Van Taylor ’71

John Schiller Jr. ’81

Vice President, Assurance BP America Inc.

Brent Smolik ’83

President and CEO Freese & Nichols Inc.

Kathleen Lucas ’81

Tim Dehne

President M2P Financing

Robert Pence ’72

Chairman Telco Investment Corp.

President RABAR Enterprises

President and Owner Chaparral Energy Inc.

President O’Connor Ventures Inc.

Vice President Weapons Engineering and Product Realization Sandia National Laboratories

Tommie Lohman ’59

Vice President and Deputy, Global Sustainment Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co.

Vice President, Systems R&D Luminex Corp.

T. Michael O’Connor

CEO Tabula Inc.

Charles Shaver ’80

Operating Partner Golden Gate Capital 93

Faculty Leadership

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Faculty

tenured or tenure-track faculty 12 National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Members 7 Distinguished Professors 14 Regents Professors 34 Endowed Chairs 50 Endowed Professorships 20 Endowed Career Development Professorships 11 Endowed Faculty Fellowships NAE Members

Regents Professors

Distinguished Professors

Kyle T. Alfriend

Dara Childs, P.E.

Je-Chin Han, P.E.

James Biard

Kenneth R. Hall

John L. Junkins, P.E.

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Christine A. Ehlig-Economides

Jay Humphrey

K.R. Rajagopal

Gilbert Froment

John L. Junkins, P.E.

J.N. Reddy, P.E.

Stephen A. Holditch, P.E.

Dallas Little

B. Don Russell, P.E.

John L. Junkins, P.E.

M. Sam Mannan, P.E.

William Saric, P.E.

Panganamala R. Kumar

John M. Niedzwecki, P.E.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Warren F. “Pete” Miller

K.R. Rajagopal

Kenneth F. Reinschmidt

J.N. Reddy

B. Don Russell, P.E.

Jose M. Roesset

William Saric, P.E.

B. Don Russell, P.E.

Bjarne Stroustrup

Chanan Singh, P.E.

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

TEES INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC COMPUTATION

CIVIL ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

CIVIL ENGINEERING

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

CIVIL ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

CIVIL ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Karan Watson

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Jennifer Welch

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

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Leadership Faculty Honors & Awards

Buchanan named ASEE president-elect Watson named president-elect of ABET Walter Buchanan, J.R. Thompson Endowed Chair and head of the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, has been named president-elect of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

Buchanan will serve as president-elect for 2011–2012 and then as president for 2012–2013. Buchanan was previously honored by the society with its Frederick J. Berger Award and the Distinguished Service Citation, only the ninth time this award had been given in 25 years.

Before arriving at Texas A&M, Buchanan was professor and director of the School of Engineering Technology at Northeastern University. He was previously professor and dean of Engineering and Industrial Technologies at the Oregon Institute of Technology; associate professor and chair of Engineering Technology and Industrial Studies at Middle Tennessee State University; assistant professor and coordinator of the Electrical Engineering Technology Associate Degree Program at the University of Central Florida; and an assistant professor of electrical engineering technology at Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis.

He has also been an electronics engineer for the Naval Avionics Center, an engineering officer for the U.S. Navy, an aerospace engineer for Boeing Co. and Martin Co., as well as an attorney for the Veterans Administration in Indianapolis.

Buchanan is a Fellow of ASEE and the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE). He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME). He is a past member of the board of directors of NSPE and a past chair of the Engineering Technology Council of ASEE and the Professional Engineers in Higher Education of NSPE. Buchanan has received many awards, including the ASEE James H. McGraw Award, the NSPE Outstanding Service Award, and the International Conference on Engineering and Computer Education Award.

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Texas A&M Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Karan Watson has been named president-elect of ABET, the world leader in higher education accreditation for applied science, computing, engineering and technology programs. She was elected by the ABET board of directors and will be formally installed in October 2011, setting the stage for her to lead the organization in 2012–2013.

Watson has been involved with ABET and accreditation for more than 20 years. She was a program evaluator for IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) and served on ABET’s Engineering Accreditation Commission from 2001 through 2006. Currently, she is the representative director from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) on the ABET board of directors.

She is a fellow of both ASEE and IEEE and has been awarded the IEEE field medal for undergraduate teaching (1996). In 1997 she received the ASEE Minorities in Engineering Award. She served on the ASEE Women in Engineering Board in 1992 and 1997. She has served as president of the IEEE Education Society and the chair of the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee.

Watson has received awards for mentoring minorities and women from the president of the United States (1997) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1999). In 1996 she received the Harriett B. Rigas Award, given by Hewlett-Packard and IEEE. Since joining the faculty in 1983, she has won many teaching awards at the university, college and department levels at Texas A&M. She joined the university as a member of the electrical engineering faculty and has since held increasingly responsible academic and administrative positions, including that of associate dean of engineering and dean of faculties. She was named provost and executive vice president for academic affairs in March after having served in that capacity on an interim basis. She also holds the rank of Regents Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

She received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D., all in electrical engineering, from Texas Tech University.

ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

Faculty Honors & Awards

54 NSF CAREER AWARDS s i n c e

2003

2011 CAREER Award Winners

The prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) is given to support the career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.

Brian Applegate

Biomedical Engineering

Jinxiang Chai

Katy Kao

Chemical Engineering

Jodie Lutkenhaus

Computer Science & Engineering

Chemical Engineering

Xing Cheng

Miladin Radovic

Diego Donzis

David Staack

Electrical & Computer Engineering

Aerospace Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Kamran Entesari

Electrical & Computer Engineering

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Faculty Honors & Awards AEROSPACE ENGINEERING Cizmas wins Best Paper Award from ASME institute Professor Paul Cizmas won the Best Paper Award from the Structures and Dynamics Committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers International Gas Turbine Institute for the paper, “Prediction of Aeroacoustic Resonance in Cavities of Hole-Pattern Stator Seals.”

An associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Cizmas joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1998. His research interests are in propulsion; unsteady aerodynamics and heat transfer; computational fluid dynamics; fluid–solid interaction; and massive parallel processing.

Junkins granted highest distinction by AIAA, receives the ICCES Lifetime Achievement Medal John L. Junkins, Distinguished Professor, was named honorary fellow by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Junkins was one of three 2011 honorary fellows, the highest distinction conferred by AIAA. Honorary fellow status is “granted to preeminent individuals who have had long and highly contributory careers in aerospace, and who embody the highest possible standards in aeronautics and astronautics.”

Orville Wright was named AIAA’s first honorary fellow in 1933, and today, these honorary fellows are the most respected names in the aerospace industry. Junkins also was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Medal by the International Conference on Computational and Experimental Engineering and Sciences (ICCES). He was the inaugural recipient of this medal, which recognizes his sustained and significant contributions in the forms of research, teaching and service to the community in the area of “Mechanics and Control, Their Synergism and Interdependence.” Junkins was cited as a world leader in the rigorous fusion of mechanics, control and associated computational methods, as well as being an outstanding academic mentor. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Junkins is Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and holder of the Wisenbaker Chair.

Mortari and Spratling win best paper at AAS/AIAA conference Associate Professor Daniele Mortari and his Ph.D. student Benjamin Spratling IV won best paper from the 20th American Astronautical Society (AAS)/American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Flight Mechanics Meeting. Their technical paper, “Star-ND: Multidimensional Star-Identification,” was presented in San Diego in February 2011. Papers were submitted on topics related to space flight mechanics and astrodynamics. Mortari was recognized at the 21st AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting in New Orleans.

BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING Governor appoints Auvermann to excellence committee Professor Brent Auvermann was invited by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to serve on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s Environmental Excellence Awards Committee.

Members of this committee are named Governor’s Blue Ribbon Committee members. This committee honors the state’s most outstanding waste reduction and pollution prevention projects. Auvermann specializes in livestock air quality, manure management and water quality.

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Faulkner named New Face of ASABE The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) has named Assistant Research Professor Brock Faulkner one of 10 members of the Class of 2011 “New Faces of ASABE.” These individuals, all 30 years of age or younger, were nominated by their ASABE sections and other members of the society. They all have distinguished themselves with outstanding early-career achievements that inspire their peers and the future engineers who will follow in their footsteps. Faulkner was also selected as one of five of ASABE’s honorees to represent the society as a “New Face of Engineering” for National Engineers Week 2011.

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING Coté elected BMES fellow Department head Gerard L. Coté was elected to the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Class of 2011 Fellows. Fellow status is awarded to society members who demonstrate exceptional achievements and experience in biomedical engineering, as well as a record of membership and participation in the society. Coté, the Charles H. and Bettye Barclay Professor, was recognized for his contributions in biomedical engineering education, leadership and research, including development of macroscale to nanoscale optical sensors for in vivo and in vitro medical diagnostics and biomedical sensing.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING El-Halwagi appointed national chair for CAST, academic trustee for CACHE, and to CEI advisory board Professor Mahmoud El-Halwagi was appointed national chair for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) Division as well as an academic trustee for the Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering (CACHE) Corp. CAST, the leading division for process systems engineering in the chemical engineering community, is responsible for a wide range of activities within AIChE that involve the application of computers and mathematics to chemical engineering problems, including process design, process control, operations and applied mathematics. CACHE is the premier not-for-profit organization for computer aids for chemical engineers. CACHE aims to promote cooperation among universities, industry and government in the development and distribution of computer-related and/ or technology-based educational aids for the chemical engineering profession. El-Halwagi also was appointed to serve on the inaugural advisory board of the Center for Energy Initiatives, launched by AIChE. The center aims to identify opportunities beyond current AIChE energy activities, develop plans to respond to opportunities, facilitate and coordinate implementation, and find ways to focus expertise and the work of AIChE members from different energy-related divisions and activities toward reaching common goals pertinent to serving the energy needs of society.

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Faculty Honors & Awards Hahn named associate editor of Automatica, appointed to IFAC policy committee and Journal of Process Control editorial board Associate Professor Juergen Hahn was named associate editor for Automatica, the flagship journal of the International Federation of Automation Control (IFAC). He also was appointed to the IFAC policy committee. Automatica publishes papers on original theoretical and experimental research and development in the control of systems, involving all facets of automatic control theory and its applications.

IFAC, a multinational federation, promotes the science and technology of control in the broadest sense in all systems (engineering, physical, biological, social or economic) in both theory and application. IFAC is also concerned with the impact of control technology on society. Hahn also was selected to serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Process Control, the premier journal for process control research.

Laird received prestigious Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software Assistant Professor Carl Laird received the prestigious Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software. Laird received the international award along with colleague Andreas Waechter of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center for their development of IPOPT, a software library for solving nonlinear, nonconvex, large-scale continuous optimization problems.

The Wilkinson Prize is awarded every four years to the entry that best addresses all phases of the preparation of numerical software. It is sponsored by Argonne National Laboratory, the Numerical Algorithms Group and the National Physical Laboratory.

Shantz named director of AIChE Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division Associate Professor Daniel Shantz, holder of the Ray Nesbitt Development Professorship III, was elected to serve as a director of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Catalysis and Reaction Engineering division. Shantz will serve as director of the division for a three-year term, beginning this year and lasting through 2013. AIChE’s Catalysis and Reaction Engineering division serves as an information exchange for knowledge of technical publications; computer programs; databases; catalysis and reaction engineering research centers; networks and programs between individuals with interests in catalysis; industrial and engineering chemistry; fuel chemistry; and petroleum.

Wilhite elected to ISCRE board of directors Associate Professor Benjamin Wilhite was elected to the board of directors for the International Symposia on Chemical Reaction Engineering (ISCRE), the premier organization in chemical reaction engineering. Wilhite, the youngest member on the distinguished 12-person board, conducts research that focuses on understanding and manipulating interactions between chemical kinetics and transport processes for process intensification, primarily in the area of microreactors for portable power and membrane reactors for sustainable energy.

CIVIL ENGINEERING Abu Al-Rub named Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Assistant Professor Rashid K. Abu Al-Rub received the 2011 Ferdinand P. Beer and E. Russell Johnston Jr. Outstanding New Mechanics Educator Award from the American Society for Engineering Education’s Mechanics Division. Abu Al-Rub’s research interests include multiscale theoretical, computational, and experimental solid and structural mechanics; high-speed impact damage; nonlocal and strain gradient theories; size effects at the micron-, submicron- and nanolength scales; damage and fracture mechanics; cyclic plasticity and fatigue damage; and mechanics of micro- and nanostructures (e.g., thin films, nanowires, electronics, nanocomposites).

Briaud serves as president of international society Jean-Louis Briaud, holder of the Spencer J. Buchanan Chair in Civil Engineering and a professor of geotechnical engineering, is serving as president of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). Briaud was elected in 2009 to a four-year term. Briaud was previously president of the Geo-Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Little named ASCE Distinguished Member Dallas N. Little, Regents Professor and the E.B. Snead Chair of Transportation and Civil Engineering, was selected a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Little is an associate director of the International Center for Aggregates Research and a senior fellow at the Texas Transportation Institute. Distinguished Membership is the highest recognition ASCE confers and is reserved for members who have attained the grade of member or fellow and who demonstrate acknowledged eminence in some branch of engineering or in its related arts and sciences.

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING Jiang wins IEEE best paper award Assistant Professor Anxiao (Andrew) Jiang received the 2009 IEEE Best Paper Award in Signal Processing and Coding for Data Storage. The award is sponsored by the Data Storage Technical Committee (DSTC) of the IEEE Communications Society. Every year, one best paper in the area of data storage is selected for this prestigious award. The prize-winning paper, “Rank Modulation for Flash Memories,” was written by Jiang, Robert Mateescu, Moshe Schwartz and Jehoshua Bruck. It appeared in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory in June 2009.

Murphy named one of the 2011 Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company Raytheon Professor Robin R. Murphy, director of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), was named one of the 2011 Most Influential Women in Technology by Fast Company. Murphy was one of five women named in “The Brainiacs” category of the list.

Fast Company began the list of Most Influential Women in Tech in 2009, and this year’s list highlights 30 women in the six different categories.

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Faculty Honors & Awards Schaefer wins Best Paper Award at Eurographics Assistant Professor Scott Schaefer and Ph.D. student Josiah Manson won the Best Paper Award at Eurographics 2011. The top computer graphics conference in Europe, Eurographics is highly selective and competitive, with only 17 percent of papers accepted. Furthermore, Eurographics is the top venue in computer graphics that presents best paper awards, and thus this award is a great credit to the authors’ research.

The prize-winning paper, “Wavelet Rasterization,” presents a new method of drawing (rasterizing) shapes such as fonts, 2-D polygons and 3-D objects.

Taylor re-elected to CRA board The members of the Computing Research Association (CRA) have re-elected Professor Valerie E. Taylor for a three-year term to its board of directors. CRA consists of more than 200 North American academic departments, laboratories, government agencies and professional societies with interests in computer science, computer engineering and related fields engaging in basic computing research. This peer-approved appointment represents a significant acknowledgment of Taylor’s leadership ability and her colleagues’ respect for her work in research and education in computer science and engineering.

Volz wins prestigious IEEE Saridis Leadership Award At the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation held in Shanghai, China, Professor Emeritus Richard A. Volz received the prestigious IEEE RAS George Saridis Leadership Award in Robotics and Automation for 2011. This award recognized Volz for his exceptional leadership throughout the Robotics Automation Society’s history in publications, conference procedures, award procedures and financial analysis and planning for publications and conferences.

Ward receives Fulbright Award Senior Lecturer Ronnie Ward was selected a Fulbright Senior Scholar to do research on international software development teams during the 2011–2012 academic year. Ward will study issues arising from international teaming on computer science class projects that include team members from the School of Electrical Engineering & Informatics at Institut Teknologi Bandung in Indonesia and Texas A&M’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING Bhattacharyya named IFAC fellow Shankar Bhattacharyya was named a fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) in acknowledgment of his “outstanding and extraordinary contributions’’ in the fields of science and control.

Bhattacharyya, the Robert M. Kennedy Professor, was cited for “fundamental contributions to robust control theory and control system synthesis.” With this award, Bhattacharyya joins a small group of distinguished scientists worldwide who are both IEEE fellows and IFAC fellows.

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Kish receives honorary degree from Uppsala University Professor Laszlo Kish received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from Uppsala University in Sweden. Kish directs the Fluctuation and Noise Exploitation Laboratory. His general research interests include the study of laws, limits and applications of electronic noise processes for sensing, communication and information processing. Uppsala University is Sweden’s oldest and most influential university. Established in the 15th century, the university has given out honorary doctorates since the 1830s. In the subject of Technology and Science they have about 160 honorary doctors, including many Nobel Prize winners and other famous individuals.

Li receives Best Paper Award at 48th Annual Design Automation Conference Associate Professor Peng Li and graduate student Parijat Mukherjee won a Best Paper Award at the 48th IEEE/ ACM Design Automation Conference. Mukherjee, Li, G. Peter Fang (Texas Instruments) and Rod Burt (Texas Instruments) co-wrote the paper, “Automatic Stability Checking for Large, Linear Analog Integrated Circuits.”

Their paper was the sole Best Paper Award winner and was selected from nine nominated candidates, 156 accepted technical papers and 690 submitted papers.

Nevels named IEEE AP-S president Professor Robert Nevels was named as president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Antennas and Propagation Society (IEEE AP-S). In addition to presiding over society meetings, Nevels has traveled to a different country each month to give the keynote address at international antennas and propagation conferences sponsored by the society.

Singh named guest professor at Tsinghua University, wins IEEE PES paper award Professor Chanan Singh, holder of the Irma Runyon Chair in Engineering, was named a guest professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, regarded as China’s top institution in engineering. Singh also won the IEEE Power and Engineering Society Technical Committee Prize Paper Award at the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) General Meeting, 2011. Singh, with Brazilian colleagues Armando Leite da Silva and Reinaldo Fernandez, won the award for their paper, “Generating Capacity Reliability Evaluation Based on Monte Carlo Simulation and CrossEntropy Methods.” The paper appeared in IEEE PES Transactions on Power Systems.

Wang selected Silver Medal Awardee from ASM International Associate Professor Haiyan Wang was selected one of two inaugural silver medal awardees for ASM International, for her innovative research at the frontier of nanostructured materials and applications and for her exceptional potential in inspired education and future leadership. The ASM Silver Medal award recognizes ASM members who are in midcareer positions for distinguished contributions in materials science and engineering and the society. This award recognizes leadership at an early stage and encourages individuals to grow, nurture and further contribute to the growth of the profession as well as the society.

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Faculty Honors & Awards Xie invited to NAE Frontiers of Engineering Symposium Assistant Professor Le Xie participated in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Japan–American Frontiers of Engineering symposium. Xie was one of the “nation’s brightest young engineers” chosen. Other participants included the president of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, president of the Engineering Academy of Japan and the executive director of the Japan Science and Technology Agency. Participants from industry, academia and government were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 265 applicants.

Yoon wins Best Paper Award at premier conference Assistant Professor Byung-Jun Yoon received the Best Paper Award from the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference 2011 (APBC 2011). Yoon and his graduate student, Mohammad Sahraeian, won for their paper, “PicXAA-R: Efficient Structural Alignment of Multiple RNA Sequences Using a Greedy Approach.” Their paper has also been selected for publication in a special issue of BMC Bioinformatics, a leading journal in bioinformatics and computational biology.

Zhang named Distinguished Lecturer for ComSoc Associate Professor Xi Zhang was named a Distinguished Lecturer for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Communications Society (ComSoc).

The Distinguished Lecturer Program provides a means for IEEE chapters and other organizations to identify and arrange lectures by the world’s renowned authorities on IEEE Communications Society topics. To be elected to the Distinguished Lecturer Program, the nominated candidates must score in the highest grouping of the following strict evaluation criteria: strength of references in the nominations, oratorical reputation of candidates and expert subject matter of candidates.

INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Çetinkaya wins best paper award at IIE conference Professor Sila Çetinkaya and former student Xingchu Liu won the Scheduling and Logistics Best Paper award for “Designing Supply Contracts in Supplier vs. Buyer-Driven Channels: The Impact of Leadership, Contract Flexibility and Information Symmetry” at the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) Annual Research Conference held in Reno, Nev., in May. Çetinkaya’s research areas are supply chain management, inventory theory and applied probability. She previously received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2001 and was named the Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer by the IIE in 2003. She is a member of IIE and INFORMS. Ding wins best track paper award at IIE conference Associate Professor Yu Ding and Lecturer Eunshin Byon were awarded the Best Track Paper award in modeling and simulation for their paper, “Integrating Simulation and Optimization for Wind Farm Operations under Stochastic Conditions,” at the Institute of Industrial Engineers Annual Research Conference held in Reno, Nev., in May. Ding holds the Centerpoint Energy Career Development Professorship.

His research interests are in the general area of applied statistics and quality engineering, with emphases on the methodologies leading to information integration in, and optimal utilization of, distributed sensor systems.

Wilhelm honored by Society of Manufacturing Engineers The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) named Wilbert Wilhelm a recipient of one of the 2011 SME International Honor Awards. Wilhelm is the Mike and Sugar Barnes Professor and was recognized with the SME Gold Medal for his outstanding service to the manufacturing engineering profession through published literature, technical writings and lectures. These awards recognize those individuals who have made significant contributions to manufacturing engineering in such areas as manufacturing technologies, technical writing, education, research, management and service to the society.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Anand inducted to Kansas State Hall of Fame N.K. Anand, executive associate dean and associate agency director for the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), was inducted into the Kansas State University College of Engineering Hall of Fame. A mechanical engineering faculty member, Anand has written or co-written more than 70 journal publications and has supervised more than 30 funded research programs. Anand also currently chairs the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Committee on Computational Heat Transfer. He is currently on the editorial board of Numerical Heat Transfer and from 2003 to 2006 was an associate technical editor of ASME’s Journal of Heat Transfer.

Bowen chairs National Science Board Texas A&M University President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus Ray Bowen was selected to head the National Science Board, which oversees the National Science Foundation. Bowen has also been on the 25-person board for eight years, appointed to the six-year term in 2002 by President George W. Bush and reappointed in 2008. The board establishes policies for the NSF, the federal agency with a $6.9 billion budget. The agency provides about 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted

by U.S. colleges and universities. The board, which meets every other month, also advises the president and Congress on issues related to science and engineering research and education.

Gao elected fellow by ASME Associate Professor Xin-Lin Gao was elected a fellow by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Gao has conducted research in a variety of areas in mechanics and materials and has published extensively in archival journals and given many presentations at national and international technical conferences on topics such as micromechanics and nanomechanics, multiscale materials modeling, nanoparticle-reinforced and nanotube-reinforced composites, cellular materials, textile and ballistic materials, dynamic behavior of materials indentation and contact mechanics, and damage and fracture mechanics.

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Faculty Honors & Awards Heffington honored for energy conservation work Associate Professor Warren M. Heffington was honored with a Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division. Heffington has directed Texas A&M’s Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) since its establishment 25 years ago. Texas A&M’s IAC is one of 26 such centers at universities around the country as part of the DOE’s Industrial Technologies Program.

Heffington, who is stepping down as IAC director, received the award “in recognition of 25 years of service to the Industrial Technologies Program and Industrial Assessment Centers.”

Jacobs receives SAE education award Assistant Professor Timothy J. Jacobs was presented with the SAE International Ralph R. Teetor Education Award during the SAE 2011 World Congress in Detroit. This award, established in 1963, recognizes and honors young educators who are successfully preparing engineers to meet the challenges that face society. The award is named after former SAE president Ralph R. Teetor, who firmly believed that engineering educators are the most effective link between engineering students and their future careers.

Rajagopal elected to Indian National Academy of Engineering, among most highly cited K.R. Rajagopal has been elected a member of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), which comprises India’s most distinguished engineers and technologists across the spectrum of engineering disciplines. Rajagopal was selected in recognition of his outstanding research and engineering contributions.

Rajagopal has also been selected to appear on ISIHighlyCited.com because of his exceptional citation count in engineering. Less than one-half of 1 percent of all publishing authors meet the criteria for inclusion on ISIHighlyCited.com. The website includes more than 5,000 researcher profiles in 21 categories. Each ISIHighlyCited.com profile includes both biographical information and a publication list.

Rajagopal is Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and the Forsyth Chair in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a professor in the Department of Mathematics, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering and the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, as well as a senior research scientist for the Texas Transportation Institute.

Reddy receives honorary doctorate, career and lifetime achievement awards J.N. Reddy, Distinguished Professor and the Wyatt Chair, received an honorary doctorate degree (Honoris Causa) from the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal. The honorary degree is conferred in recognition of Reddy’s original and sustained contributions to education, research and professional service, and their profound impact on the scientific community in Portugal. Reddy also was honored with the ACE-X Award for Career Achievements at the 4th International Conference on Advanced Computational Engineering and Experimenting (ACE-X) 2010. Reddy was also honored for Lifetime Achievements in Composite Materials at the Annual Technical Meeting

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of the American Society of Composites, where several sessions in his honor were organized. The shear deformation plate and shell theories of composite materials that Reddy developed and bear his name are well known, and finite element models he developed have been implemented into commercial finite element commercial software such as ABAQUS and NISA. Schneider receives AIAA Dryden Lectureship award Visiting Professor William Schneider was selected to present the 2012 Dryden Lectureship in Research for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The Dryden Lectureship in Research emphasizes the great importance of basic research to the advancement of aeronautics and astronautics and is a salute to research scientists and engineers. The award consists of an engraved medal, certificate of citation and a rosette pin symbolizing technical excellence, which will be presented to Schneider after the lecture Jan. 11, 2012, in conjunction with the 2012 AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting (including the New Horizons Forum and Aerospace Exposition) in Nashville.

NUCLEAR ENGINEERING Juzaitis elected to NEI board of directors Department Head and the Sallie and Don Davis Professor Raymond Juzaitis has been elected to the Nuclear Energy Institute’s (NEI) board of directors. NEI is the policy organization of the nuclear energy and technologies industry and participates in both the national and global policymaking process. The NEI board of directors tries to involve all facets of the nuclear industry in shaping the focus of the industry’s efforts.

McDeavitt elected to executive committee Assistant Professor Sean McDeavitt was elected to the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility (ATR NSUF) Users Working Group Executive Committee.

The committee will lead the working group in its mission to provide feedback to the user facility management and the U.S. Department of Energy on all matters concerning the operation of the user facility. Also, the Users Working Group advocates throughout the federal budget process.

McDeavitt was elected after being chosen to lead one of the five new university-led research projects at the ATR NSUF, located at Idaho National Laboratory.

Poston elected to International Nuclear Energy Academy Professor John Poston was elected to the membership of the International Nuclear Academy (INEA). INEA is an honor society of the international nuclear scientific and engineering community. The objective of the INEA is to foster the development and use of the peaceful application of nuclear energy in a safe and economic manner throughout the world. The organization conducts studies and discussions and develops recommendations for the international nuclear community on generic issues relevant to nuclear energy matters.

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Faculty Honors & Awards PETROLEUM ENGINEERING Blasingame receives distinguished achievement award Professor Thomas Blasingame received the 2010 SPE Gulf Coast Regional Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty at an awards banquet in May. The SPE Gulf Coast Regional Award recognizes Blasingame’s outstanding contributions to SPE and his dedicated service to the Gulf Coast Region. Blasingame, the Robert L. Whiting Endowed Professor, joined the faculty in 1991. He is involved in continuing studies on methods for the evaluation and prediction of gas reservoir performance, field-scale programs in reservoir description and reservoir management, development and application of methods of analysis and interpretation of well tests and production data, and theoretical/ computational studies of multiphase flow in porous media.

Datta-Gupta on SPE committee for “worst case” calculations for offshore wells Akhil Datta-Gupta was part of a Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) committee to develop guidelines for the “worst case discharge” calculations for offshore wells. This is a new requirement for offshore operators imposed by the U.S. Department of the Interior after the Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico. Datta-Gupta is a professor and the LeSuer Chair in Reservoir Management.

Holditch appointed to committee for developing U.S. onshore natural gas resources Stephen A. Holditch, Noble Chair and department head, was appointed to a committee of environmental, industry and state regulatory experts to recommend best practices for safe, responsible development of the nation’s onshore natural gas resources. Holditch, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a renowned expert in the petroleum industry, also directs the Energy Institute at Texas A&M. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the committee was formed to make recommendations to improve the safety and environmental performance of natural gas hydraulic fracturing from shale formations, thereby harnessing a vital domestic energy resource while ensuring the safety of drinking water and the health of the environment.

Lane named SPE distinguished member Robert H. Lane, the Aghorn Energy Development Professor, has been named an SPE distinguished member. Lane has experience in formation damage, stimulation, remedial cementing, injection well cleanup, coiled-tubing well work, and water and gas shutoff in Alaska fields, including some of North America’s largest waterflood and miscible gas enhanced oil recovery projects. He is a recognized authority on chemical methods of water control and has served as an SPE distinguished lecturer on the subject.

McVay selected for ConocoPhillips faculty program Associate Professor Duane McVay, the Michael and Heidi Gatens Development Professor in Unconventional Resources, was selected to participate in the ConocoPhillips Faculty Sponsorship Program. Each year ConocoPhillips awards faculty members who are heavily involved with student education and active in areas of interest to ConocoPhillips. The $25,000 award given to those who participate in the program is used at the participant’s discretion to continue these efforts. In addition to receiving the monetary award, McVay has been invited to visit ConocoPhillips offices to meet with company representatives and other recipients of this award.

Zhu named SPE Distinguished Member Ding Zhu, associate professor and Douglas Von Gonten Faculty Fellow, has been named an SPE distinguished member. Zhu has conducted and supervised research projects in production and well stimulation and has led in complex well performance. She has developed several comprehensive computer software applications for production engineering, many of which industry sponsors have adopted. She developed the production engineering software package PPS, which has been widely used in teaching and in the field worldwide.

King to receive SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award Professor Michael J. King, the John and Debbie Bethancourt Endowed Professor, will be a 2011 recipient of the SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award.

King joined the faculty in 2009. He previously worked for BP America and the BP Amoco E&P Upstream Technology Group. His expertise is in 3-D reservoir modeling and characterization, upscaling of geologic models for flow simulation, and streamline-based simulation and flow analysis.

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Chairs & Professorships Chairs

Mike O’Connor Chair I M. Sam Mannan, P.E.

Albert B. Stevens Chair Christine Ehlig-Economides

Mike O’Connor Chair II Thomas K. Wood

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Baker Hughes Chair Maria A. Barrufet, P.E.

Noble Chair Stephen A. Holditch, P.E.

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering Panganamala R. Kumar

Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. ’45 Chair J.N. Reddy, P.E.

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science Bjarne Stroustrup COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Delbert A. Whitaker Chair Costas Georghiades, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

E.B. Snead ’25 Chair Dallas N. Little, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Forsyth Chair K.R. Rajagopal MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Fred J. Benson Chair Robert L. Lytton, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Harry E. Bovay Jr. Chair B. Don Russell Jr., P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Irma Runyon Chair Chanan Singh, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Jack E. & Frances Brown Chair Kenneth R. Hall CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

J.L. “Corky” Frank/Marathon Ashland Chair Kenneth Reinschmidt CIVIL ENGINEERING

John & Bea Slattery Chair Dimitris C. Lagoudas, P.E. AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

John Edgar Holt ’27 Chair Hisham Nasr-El-Din

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Chair Edward R. Dougherty ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Robert Whiting Chair A. Daniel Hill PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

Royce E. Wisenbaker ’39 Chair I John L. Junkins, P.E. AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Royce E. Wisenbaker ’39 Chair II David C. Hyland AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Spencer J. Buchanan ’26 Chair Jean-Louis Briaud, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

TEES Distinguished Research Chair Marlan O. Scully PHYSICS

TEES Distinguished Research Chair Terry K. Alfriend AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

TEES Distinguished Research Chair L.S. “Skip” Fletcher MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

TI Chair Kai Chang, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

TI/Jack Kilby Chair Edgar Sanchez-Sinencio ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Wofford Cain Senior Chair John M. Niedzwecki, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Professorships A.P. & Florence Wiley Professorship III Robin L. Autenrieth, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Allen-Bradley Professorship V. Jorge Leon, P.E. ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION

Arthur McFarland (1905) Professorship Bill Batchelor, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Carolyn S. & Tommie E. Lohman ’59 Professorship James Moore Jr. BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Charles D. Holland ’53 Professorship Michael V. Pishko CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Charles H. & Bettye Barclay Professorship Gerard L. Coté BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

Chevron Professorship II Jennifer L. Welch COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Dow Chemical Professorship Yue Kuo, P.E. CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Eugene E. Webb ’43 Professorship Mladen Kezunovic, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Ford Motor Company Design Professorship II Duncan M. “Hank” Walker COMPUTER SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

G. Paul Pepper ’54 Professorship Kalyan Annamalai, P.E. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Gas Processors Suppliers Association Professorship Perla A. Balbuena CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

General Dynamics Professorship Sharath Girimaji AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Gulf Oil/Thomas A. Dietz Professorship Jerald A. Caton, P.E.

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

J.R. Thompson Department Head Chair Walter W. Buchanan, P.E.

HTRI Professorship Marvin L. Adams

ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION

Leland T. Jordan ’29 Chair Dara Childs, P.E. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Leonard & Valerie Bruce Leadership Chair Barry F. Lawrence, P.E. ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION

LeSuer Chair Akhil Datta-Gupta PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

Marcus C. Easterling ’30 Chair Je-Chin Han, P.E.

NUCLEAR ENGINEERING

Herbert D. Kelleher Professorship Roger E. Smith, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Holdredge/Paul Professorship Dennis O’Neal, P.E. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

I. Andrew Rader Professorship Daniel F. Jennings, P.E. ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION

James M. ’12 & Ada Sutton Forsyth Professorship N.K. Anand, P.E. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

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Chairs & Professorships Joe M. Nesbitt Professorship Dragomir Bukur

Stewart & Stevenson Professorship I Srinivas R. Vadali, P.E.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

John E. & Deborah F. Bethancourt Michael J. King

Stewart & Stevenson Professorship II William Saric, P.E.

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

J.W. Runyon Jr. Professorship I A.L. Narasimha Reddy

Tenneco Professorship Ramesh Talreja

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

J.W. Runyon Jr. Professorship II Aniruddha Datta

TI Professorship I in Analog Engineering Jose Silva-Martinez

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Lanatter & Herbert Fox Professorship Jorge M. Seminario

TI Professorship II in Analog Engineering Cam Nguyen, P.E.

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Leland T. Jordan ’29 Professorship David E. Claridge, P.E.

TI Professorship in Engineering Prasad Enjeti, P.E.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

L.F. “Pete” Peterson ’36 Professorship Peter P. Valko

Victor H. Thompson III Professorship Behbood B. Zoghi, P.E.

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION

Linda & Ralph Schmidt ’68 Professorship Hung-Jue Sue MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Mast-Childs Professorship Luis San Andres, P.E. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

McFerrin Professorship Mahmoud El-Halwagi CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Mike & Sugar Barnes Professorship Wilbert Wilhelm, P.E. INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Nelson-Jackson Professorship Gerald Morrison, P.E. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. Professorship Taher M. Schobeiri MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Raytheon Company Professorship in Computer Science Robin R. Murphy COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Raytheon Company Professorship in Electrical Engineering Hamid A. Toliyat, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Robert L. Whiting Professorship Thomas A. Blasingame, P.E. PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Professorship I Mehrdad (Mark) Ehsani, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Professorship II Shankar P. Bhattacharyya, P.E. ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship I Valerie E. Taylor COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

Royce E. Wisenbaker Professorship II Steven M. Wright ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Sallie & Don Davis ’61 Professorship Raymond J. Juzaitis

W.H. Bauer Professorship Robert E. Randall, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Zachry Professorship I John Mander CIVIL ENGINEERING

Zachry Professorship II Stuart D. Anderson, P.E.

Gulf Oil/Thomas A. Dietz Career Development Professorship I Jaime C. Grunlan MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Gulf Oil/Thomas A. Dietz Career Development Professorship II Anastasia H. Muliana MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Kenneth R. Hall Development Professorship Victor M. Ugaz CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Leland T. Jordan ’29 Career Development Professorship Eric L. Petersen MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

Michael & Heidi Gatens Professorship Duane A. McVay, P.E. PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

Ray B. Nesbitt Professorship I Arul Jayaraman CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Ray B. Nesbitt Professorship II Juergen Hahn CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Ray B. Nesbitt Professorship III Daniel Shantz CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

Ray B. Nesbitt Professorship IV Mariah B. Hahn CHEMICAL ENGINEERING

CIVIL ENGINEERING

Williams Brothers Construction Company Development Professorship I H. “Gene” Hawkins Jr., P.E.

Career Development Professorships

CIVIL ENGINEERING

Aghorn Energy Development Professorship Robert H. Lane

Zachry Career Development Professorship I Dominique Lord, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Zachry Career Development Professorship II Scott Socolofsky CIVIL ENGINEERING

PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

Beavers Charitable Trust/William F. Urban ’41 Development Professorship David N. Ford, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

E.B. Snead ’25 Career Development Professorship I Mark W. Burris CIVIL ENGINEERING

E.B. Snead ’25 Career Development Professorship II Mary Beth D. Hueste, P.E. CIVIL ENGINEERING

Edward “Pete” Aldridge ’60 Professorship I Amine A. Benzerga AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Edward “Pete” Aldridge ’60 Professorship II Adonios Karpetis AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

George & Joan Voneiff Development Professorship Ahmad Ghassemi PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

George K. Hickox Jr. Development Professorship David S. Schechter, P.E. PETROLEUM ENGINEERING

NUCLEAR ENGINEERING

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Research Facts 289,000 square feet of lab space 25 multidisciplinary research centers Superior research equipment, including: 路 Two nuclear reactors, one each for research and teaching 路 Coastal, estuarine and deepwater research facilities 路 Low-speed wind tunnel 路 Microbeam accelerator

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Research Facts

$137.5 million in sponsored research awards (Fiscal Year 2010)

Federally sponsored research awards

$100.7 million 73%

RESEARCH BY THE NUMBERS 4,383 research projects 2,513 industrial research sponsors 2,433 proposals submitted $485,973 in awards per researcher 40 formal invention disclosures 28 patent applications 107

IT’S TIME FOR TEXAS A&M

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ENGINEERINGMAGAZINE .TAM U .EDU

NOW OPEN

FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY ENGINEERING EDUCATION, RESEARCH AND SERVICE

Emerging Technologies Building $104 million project State-of-the-art classrooms Lecture halls Study areas Wet bench labs Large-scale visualization room Houses the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver Sustainable Building

301 WISENBAKER ENGINEERING RESEARCH CENTER 3126 TAMU COLLEGE STATION, TX 77843-3126