ENGINEERING research at Texas A&M University
2012
Stopping a Silent Killer Destroying HIV before the virus infects cells
Putting an End to the Guessing Game Estimating the weight of helicopters during flight for military and medevac operations
The Power of Social Media Finding, identifying and evaluating online crowds for change
Saving Energy—and Money Continuous CommissioningŽ process helps save more than $100 million in energy costs
Emerging Technologies Building
ENGINEERING research at Texas A&M University
2012
Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering
M. Katherine Banks, Ph.D., P.E. Assistant Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs
Marilyn M. Martell director of communications
Pamela S. Green
ENGINEERING research at Tex as A&M Universit y
2012
Stopping a Silent Killer Destroying HIV before the virus infects cells
editorial
Robert Burns Ryan Garcia Lesley Kriewald Gwendolyn Brown Lucas Tim Schnettler Kara Bounds Socol Deana Totzke Gabe Waggoner
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Audrey Guidry John Henry Vicky Nelson Online & Interactive design
Charlie Apel Donald St. Martin Photography
Bryce Bridges Jim Lyle Production & distribution
Christina Mitchell Jennifer Olivarez
Putting an End to the Guessing Game Estimating the weight of helicopters during flight for military and medevac operations
The Power of Social Media Finding, identifying and evaluating online crowds for change
Saving Energy—and Money Continuous Commissioning process helps save more
ON THE COVER Stopping a Silent Killer Destroying HIV before the virus infects cells More on page 14.
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 2012. 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. TTI.COE1201.6141.4M
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FROM THE DEAN’S DESK
We all recognize
that there is more to a college experience than just academics. Our students gain critical leadership and team-building skills through participation in student professional organizations, residential hall administration and campus charity activities. The educational experience should include many avenues of learning. Although the classroom lecture is an important component of most courses, many students choose to supplement their educational portfolio with internships, study abroad programs and research projects. Embarking on a research project under the direction of a professor is a unique experience for an undergraduate student. Research projects require our students to be creative, self-motivated, organized and responsible, and can enhance understanding of fundamental concepts. Students selected for these projects are our best and brightest, and often show a tendency toward entrepreneurship. Many of our students have been involved in patents, publications and start-up companies, and have generated additional funding based on their work. These students often choose to continue their education in our graduate programs. Consider Kate Stuckman. As a sophomore majoring in electrical and computer engineering, she turned a word game that she played with her father into software. The result: Professor Wordington’s Spellatorium, an iPhone app. Opportunities for innovation came early for Kate when as a freshman she began working on a Boeing research project that focused on development of a navigation system for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which resulted in a patent. Or perhaps you have seen our graduate student Jon Moeller in the Best Buy commercial recognizing college students for innovation. Jon proudly proclaims that he is a Texas A&M student and describes ZeroTouch, the most responsive and cost-effective, multifinger sensor available for television-sized displays. He developed the technology as an undergraduate student in computer science. Significant worldwide attention followed and he continues to work on the project through our graduate program. Kate and Jon are just two examples of how our research programs are enhanced when we encourage our undergraduate students to identify innovative solutions to technical challenges. Given an environment that supports and encourages inquiry, our next generation of engineers will be well prepared to address the complex global challenges of tomorrow. In this magazine, we feature a small sampling of the research that we are conducting at Texas A&M. Although faculty members are the primary focus in these articles, many of these projects involve students at all academic levels. I hope you enjoy this publication and are inspired by the extraordinary creativity of our students and faculty.
M. Katherine Banks, Ph.D., P.E. Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering Director, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Harold J. Haynes Dean’s Chair Professor Texas A&M University The Texas A&M University System
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Features
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13
16 24
4
6 13 16 20 24 30 34 38 42 46 50
The Power of Social Media
Finding, identifying and evaluating online crowds for change
SMARTER ENERGY
Improving reliability and efficiency of the electric power grid
Stopping a Silent Killer
Destroying HIV before the virus infects cells
Putting an End to the Guessing Game
Estimating the weight of helicopters during flight for military and medevac operations
Walking Robots
Building two-legged robots that can walk—like humans
Zhu-ming Around the Globe
SPE distinguished lecturer and Texas A&M professor takes her controversial message on a 22-stop tour
Cardiac Mechanics
Restoring proper motion to save heart muscle
ASEE President Walt Buchanan Education leader, lifelong learner
A New Sense of Direction
Pushing the limits of touch to guide individuals in stressful situations
Texas A&M University at Qatar Focus on women in engineering
MaterialS for Irrigation
Determining the best irrigation canal liner for Texas soil
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54 Saving Energy—and Money 60 65 70 76 79 92 94 95 106 108
Continuous Commissioning® process helps save more than $100 million in energy costs
Simulator becomes reality
A piece of U.S. space history comes to Texas A&M
Nuclear Materials Under EXTREME CONDITIONS
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Designing advanced materials for next-generation nuclear reactors
Building Better Roads
Software helps predict pavement damage for better, longer-lasting roads
RANKINGS
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NEWS
LEADERSHIP FACULTY
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FACULTY AWARDS & HONORS CHAIRS & PROFESSORSHIPS
RESEARCH FACTS
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The Power of
Social Media Finding, identifying and evaluating online crowds for change
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By Lesley Kriewald
“The social Web and social media have essentially become weapons of mass persuasion. You have large numbers of people interacting with each other, so you see not only spam but political campaigns involved in this. You see evidence of governments and hate groups engaging in this.�
7
The world of social media is a crowded market: Facebook. Twitte Those are just the ones you’ve heard about, and the numbers are staggering:
combined have more than
1.2
billion users
Social Media YouTube is the secondlargest search engine.
popularity has exploded unique users
400,000—May 2011 18.7 million—March 2012
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er. LinkedIn. Instagram. Pinterest. YouTube. Flickr. Google+. Foursquare.
1billion
$
In April 2012, Facebook paid
for mobile photo-sharing app
BY
the numbers gets more
weekly traffic than
If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest, larger than the United States.
the largest
search engine,
Social media have replaced pornography as the most popular online activity.
And on it goes. 9
“This has lots of good benefits,” he says. “You see self-organized systems. You see serendipitous discovery of new information and new uses of these systems beyond what the systems designers had ever imagined. You see communities form. There are all these exciting possibilities that happen when you let people collaborate.” Now he wants to know whether these systems can be mined to find interesting or useful information to empower decision makers. Caverlee asks, Can collective intelligence be harnessed?
Online gathering places
Crowds are naturally forming, Caverlee says, and the goal of his current research is to find these online crowds and engage them to accomplish tasks. In 2010, Caverlee received a grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (through the agency’s Information Innovation Office) to identify online “hotspots” in realtime social systems, mainly Twitter, where hundreds of millions of messages are posted per day.
Caverlee looks at tremendous numbers of users and tremendous amounts of information, the places people go, the people they talk to and interact with, the content they are interested in, and the connections between them.
Social media—
user-generated content. Texas A&M computer scientist James Caverlee is studying the use of social media to harness collective intelligence to perform tasks, to persuade and change minds, and maybe even to change the world. As an expert in large-scale networked information systems—such as the World Wide Web, social media and mobile information systems— Caverlee looks at tremendous numbers of users and tremendous amounts of information, the places people go, the people they talk to and interact with, the content they are interested in, and the connections between them. These large-scale networked information systems are typically open and intentionally designed to encourage participation, Caverlee says.
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These online gatherings can be driven by natural disasters or by sporting events such as the Super Bowl. How do you find these hotspots in real time when huge numbers of people are posting hundreds of millions of messages? The task required developing algorithms and methods. “After the Vancouver riots, people started posting photos and video and messages of the riots,” Caverlee says. “So you had this online reflection of current events. Assuming you can mine these large-scale systems and figure out where people are talking about this particular event, can we close the loop and engage with these crowds that are forming in these systems? “It’s a form of crowdsourcing,” Caverlee says. “Can crowds of people online work together intelligently, and if so, how?” Such crowdsourcing would be useful in a disaster, natural or otherwise. When disaster strikes, human impulse is for people on-site to use Facebook and Twitter to post photos and video of the damage, status updates, and
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their locations. Once these online crowds that have formed in response to this particular emergency are detected out of the hundreds of millions of other online activities, the challenge then becomes connecting the crowds to emergency responders. “If I am an emergency responder with limited resources, I need to know where to send trucks and rescue teams,” he says. “Emergency responders have to make these decisions with limited information in the immediate moments after this disaster has struck. So let’s engage with these detected crowds and know where they are, but also issue them jobs to complete.” The National Science Foundation has sponsored some of Caverlee’s work in this area. He says that one job, for instance, would be for people to step outside their homes and take photos of the ground or buildings so that structural engineers can assess the safety of structures in the area. Computers can’t do that job, Caverlee says. Real people need to be directed to take better photos, to give better information that can help decision makers know where to send resources. “In the moment, as this is happening, the big challenge is to detect this crowd, connect them back to the stakeholder—in this case, the emergency responder—and then give them tasks to do to accelerate decision making and reduce response time.”
Crowd quality—in the moment
Alongside this detection and task assignment is assessing the relative quality of a newly formed crowd. A second project, this one funded by the National Science Foundation, aims to assess and monitor the quality of these crowds. A typical measure of Web quality is Google’s PageRank, or the content of a page or site, the number of clicks on a page, the links around the page, or how people engage with the site. CNN.com, for example, may be a reputable
page compared with a blog because CNN has a lot of in-links, a long life on the Web, more site visitors and higher click rates.
“It’s a form of crowdsourcing. Can crowds of people online work together intelligently, and if so, how?” But crowds form in real-time systems in response to events, such as a presidential debate, a natural disaster or even just friends talking about a game. The crowd itself may not have a long life span, so a long history to assess the crowd is not available. Instead, researchers have to develop other methods to evaluate relative quality. “We don’t have history for these people, or accounts,” Caverlee says, “so we have to make assessments in near real time and build models quickly so that we can speed and improve decision making.”
Spam: Not just potted meat
Caverlee says the flip side of these open systems is getting people to participate in, but not abuse, the system. “Spam has moved out of our e-mail inboxes and into these social systems,” he says, citing the example of Astroturf, a campaign that looks like a grassroots effort that instead uses fake accounts and bots to promote particular candidates or ideas. Caverlee started his research with Web spammers who tried to manipulate search engine rankings. But spam has evolved, and with the rise of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, spammers are now infiltrating and attacking those systems. In work funded by Google and in collaboration with Steve Webb (then at Georgia Tech and now an independent consultant),
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Caverlee studied social spammers by deploying social honeypots, a new twist on a classic security reconnaissance trick to attract spammers and then study their tactics and behaviors to reverse engineer a solution to stop them. The research group ran the social honeypots in MySpace (when MySpace was still popular and active) and in Twitter, engaging in behaviors to attract spammers to them to serve as an early warning system to detect new and emerging behaviors in these social systems. In Twitter, the group set up accounts that didn’t tweet or tweeted only randomly, and that did not connect with other Twitter users. “These are passive accounts with no listed interests, that no active users would want to friend—these honeypots are irresistible to spammers,” Caverlee says. “So if one of these accounts tried to be friended, we would turn down the request but then crawl back to mine their profiles and connections. We could build machine-learned models of them based on artifacts of what they’ve left in the system.”
In this war of persuasion, then, researchers want to know how to change people’s minds and views of the world. Typical spammer behavior is to follow as many other users as possible. Caverlee says an obvious sign of a bot-controlled account is a certain set ratio of friends to followers. Looking at user history showed that as soon as an upper threshold was reached, the botcontrolled account would immediately dump hundreds of followers to maintain the set ratio. Having many links per tweet is another red flag that a user is a bot-controlled account. With 60 Twitter honeypots, the team recorded 36,000 spammers in seven months. By modeling the behavior, the team could detect the spam accounts eight to 10 days before Twitter’s own spam detectors did. Dr. James Caverlee
Computer Science & Engineering Assistant Professor 979.845.0537 caverlee@cse.tamu.edu
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Weapons of mass persuasion
The group noticed not only automated spam but also lots of coordinated spam, more like
campaigns. The team found multiple accounts with similar talking points, and more subtle, sophisticated spam campaigns instead of brute-force spam that’s easier to identify. So the team’s current work, funded through the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research in spring 2012, is looking at propaganda and strategic manipulation in these large networked social systems. “The social Web and social media have essentially become weapons of mass persuasion,” he says. “You have large numbers of people interacting with each other, so you see not only spam but political campaigns involved in this. You see evidence of governments and hate groups engaging in this.” In this war of persuasion, then, researchers want to know how to change people’s minds and views of the world. “We know that this is happening already, but we as researchers don’t have a very good handle on what’s going on, only anecdotal evidence,” he says. So Caverlee is now trying to detect persuasion at the scale of these large systems, finding these talking points and tracking their evolution. Coupled with that is building mathematical models that can explain this behavior. “Anecdotally, there’s this idea of tipping points, where things go viral,” he says. “Once we detect these campaigns, can we rewind the tape and build models? Can we find out if it’s the content of the message, or the topology of the social network, or is it key influencers or is it that the message reached a certain kind of inertia, a certain mass of people?” This all goes back to the idea of these open systems, Caverlee says. “Anyone can engage, anyone can promote their messages, so it all becomes a war of ideas. Because I’m a computer scientist, I’m trying to build computational methods for detecting and mining these campaigns, for modeling their evolution, for determining how to stop a campaign or determine the factors that make a campaign go global, and understanding the factors that influence all of this.” O
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By Deana Totzke
SMARTER
Energy Improvingreliabilityandefficiency of the electric power grid As energy demand and the power grid’s dependence on renewable generation increase, so does the demand for more reliable power delivery—and the need to improve how we produce and use energy. A professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University is working on one solution that will change how electricity is delivered from suppliers to consumers. 13
The RATC solution will help prevent future power outages, which account for roughly $80 billion in losses each year for U.S. businesses and consumers. Minimizing the grid’s response time to expensive interruptions will also make integrating intermittent renewable energy sources into the grid easier.
Mladen Kezunovic, the Eugene E. Webb Professor, and his team received a $4.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) for their research project, Robust Adaptive Topology Control (RATC). Their grant is part of $156 million that ARPA-E awarded to 60 leading-edge research projects to dramatically improve how the U.S. produces and uses energy. The new ARPA-E selections focus on accelerating innovations in clean technology while increasing U.S. competitiveness in rare-earth alternatives and 14
breakthroughs in biofuels, thermal storage, grid controls and solar-powered electronics. The electric grid is subject to interruption from cascading faults caused by extreme operating conditions (such as overloads and energy transfer congestion) and malicious external attacks. The grid can also experience intermittent electricity generation from renewable energy sources, including wind and solar power. For instance, when favorable winds cease to blow, energy from wind power decreases and conventional sources of energy must make up the difference. engi nee ri ngmagazi ne .tam u .e du engineeringmagazine .ed u
The grid’s susceptibility to such interruptions means that research into more efficient power delivery is especially important, Kezunovic says. He also directs the Smart Grid Center at the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES). The researchers are using a method called topology control—that is, reconfiguring the power system—to improve system operations and manage disruptions within the electric grid. The RATC solution will be capable of detecting, classifying and responding to grid disturbances by reconfiguring the grid to maintain economically efficient operations while also guaranteeing reliability. This approach would help prevent future power outages, which account for roughly $80 billion in losses each year for U.S. businesses and consumers. Minimizing the grid’s response time to expensive interruptions will also make integrating intermittent renewable energy sources into the grid easier.
“The new concept will reduce the time to correctly detect, classify and characterize the contingencies and respond to mitigate problems in the power grid.” “The new concept will reduce the time to correctly detect, classify and characterize the contingencies and respond to mitigate problems in the power grid,” says Kezunovic, who is a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “The concept uses a new control strategy. The online problem detection and classification will use advanced data analytics. A decision-making, topology-switching control strategy will define real-time actions for mitigating the grid problems under a variety of undesirable operating conditions.” The new adaptive controls will help avoid costs from the consequences of blackouts, making the power grid more reliable and resilient.
“Basically, it’s a new way to control the grid to mitigate contingencies,” Kezunovic says. “The control is through optimization software and does not require costly specialized controllers.”
The new adaptive controls will help avoid costs from the consequences of blackouts, making the power grid more reliable and resilient. The RATC team includes researchers from Texas A&M; TEES; the University of California, Berkeley; Arizona State University; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; the Tennessee Valley Authority; the Grid Protection Alliance; and Applied Communication Sciences. The RATC team focuses on several different areas. Kezunovic, the principal investigator, works on the disturbance detection and RATC implementation strategy. “My part is related to making sure the RATC control strategy is implementable since my group is checking feasibility and offering solutions to harden the control system,” he says. “There are multiple partners on the project, each with a role to look into specific aspects of the solution.” And once the three-year project is complete, Kezunovic says, he hopes their research will play a critical role in the future of the U.S. electric grid and how it produces and uses energy. “As the results are obtained and verified using field data, we still have a huge task in front of us to make the industry aware of the new solution and help the transition of our solution into the product line,” he says. “We are working with the ARPA-E team and TEES Texas Center for Applied Technology on developing the technology-to-market strategy for making the solution widely available for the industry to use.” O
Dr. Mladen Kezunovic, P.E.
Electrical & Computer Engineering Eugene E. Webb Professor 979.845.7509 kezunov@ece.tamu.edu
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By Ryan Garcia
STOPPING A SILENT KILLER Destroying HIV before the virus infects cells
Since its discovery in 1981, AIDS has killed more than
25 million people worldwide. The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, causes AIDS, and the World Health Organization considers HIV infection a pandemic. About 0.6 percent of the global population lives with HIV, including an estimated 22.5 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. But now, a powerful topical preventive for HIV could soon be a step closer to clinical trials, thanks to a newly discovered molecular compound that dissolves the virus on contact.
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Researchers at Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute have demonstrated the ability of the synthetic compound known as PD 404,182 to break apart the AIDScausing virus before it can infect cells. The discovery was made by Zhilei Chen, assistant professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M, and her team of researchers. Their findings appeared in the November 2011 online edition of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy 56(2): 672-681, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. “This is a virucidal small-molecule compound, meaning that it has the ability to kill a virus; in this case, that virus is HIV,” Chen says. “Basically, it acts by breaking the virus open. We found that when HIV comes in contact with this compound, the virus breaks open and loses its genetic material. In a sense, the virus ‘dissolves,’ and its RNA becomes exposed. Since RNA is pretty unstable, once it is exposed it’s gone very quickly, and the virus is rendered noninfectious.”
The compound quickly rips open the virus before it can inject its genetic material into a human cell. What’s more—and perhaps even more important—the compound, Chen explains, achieves this by acting on something other than the viral envelope protein. This means that the virus can’t alter its proteins to bolster its resistance—something that’s made HIV notoriously difficult to treat. “We believe this compound is not working on the viral protein of the viruses but on something else common in all the viruses on which we tested it—some cellular material common in these viruses,” Chen notes. “Because this compound is acting on a component that is not encoded by the virus, it will be difficult for the virus to evolve resistance against this compound.” Although not a cure for HIV, the compound shows significant potential for use as a preventive, specifically in the form of a topical gel that could be applied in the vaginal canal, Chen explains.
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“This is a virucidal small-molecule compound,meaning that it has the ability to kill a virus; in this case, that virus is HIV.”
“We conducted a number of tests to demonstrate that this compound remains active in vaginal fluid and is not rendered ineffective,” Chen says. “In the form of a vaginal gel, the compound would serve as a barrier, acting almost instantaneously to destroy the virus before it could infect a cell, thereby preventing HIV transmission from one person to another.”
Dr. Zhilei Chen
Chemical Engineering Assistant Professor 979.862.1610 zhilei.chen@chemail.tamu.edu
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Surprisingly, Chen says she and her team did not set out to discover an HIV preventive. Instead, they were screening molecules for use in potential drug therapies targeting hepatitis C virus, which causes the dangerous and often fatal liver disease. Using a screening system that Chen developed, the team
screened thousands of molecular compounds, in search of those that could block aspects of the HCV life cycle. During the screenings, the team made an interesting discovery: Not only was PD 404,182 an HCV inhibitor, it also worked on lentiviruses (the group’s negative control in its experimental procedures). Intrigued by that finding, Chen then tested PD 404,182 on HIV, also a lentivirus, and found the compound even more effective. “We believe PD 404,182 acts through a unique and important mechanism,” Chen notes. “Most of the known virucidal compounds interact with the virus membrane, but our engineeringmagazine enginee ringmagazine .tam u .e .ed du
The molecular compound discovered by Assistant Professor Zhilei Chen could help limit the spread of HIV when used in a preventive topical gel that dissolves the virus on contact.
compound does not appear to interact with the virus membrane. Instead, it bypasses interaction with the membrane and still compromises the structural integrity of the virus.” The compound’s ability to avoid interaction with the virus membrane is important because human cells have similar membranes, Chen notes. If the compound were to disrupt the structure of the virus membrane, it could also disrupt and ultimately kill human cells. PD 404,182 doesn’t interact with these membranes and is therefore a more attractive option for clinical treatment, Chen says.
As with any potential pharmaceutical, several key steps are still needed before it winds up on drugstore shelves. In addition to several rounds of animal studies to ensure that the compound is safe for humans, further collaborations with chemists are needed to continue to improve the efficiency of the compound. Chen says she also plans to further explore precisely how PD 404,182 breaks apart HIV. This work is a collaboration between Chen’s team, consisting of graduate students Ana Maria Chamoun and Rudo Simeon; postdoctoral associate Karuppiah Chockalingam; and Professor Philippe Gallay’s team at the Scripps Research Institute. O
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guessing game
Putting an end to the
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By Tim Schnettler
Estimating the weight of helicopters during flight for military and medevac operations
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Rogers and his students are working to create an avionics package that will provide precise weight and mass center information to the pilot in real time.
Helicopters
offer versatility and ease of access that other modes of transportation cannot. From military operations to use in lifesaving medical situations to transporting VIPs, more than 45,000 helicopters are in operation worldwide, making them as common a sight in the skies as airplanes.
By measuring the aircraft responses to the pilot’s control inputs, the onboard software package will estimate weight and mass center by using advanced computational methods. But for helicopters—unlike airplanes—the weight and center of mass can change drastically during flight. In a battle situation, cargo or troops may enter or leave the aircraft rapidly. The pilot may not know precisely how the helicopter’s weight has changed, and he or she has little time to figure it out. “Currently there is a person whose job it is to estimate the weight of items coming on and off the aircraft,” says Texas A&M University aerospace engineering professor Jonathan Rogers. “They are very conservative because they have to be. A pilot’s precise knowledge of
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how much the helicopter weighs would benefit him greatly. “Right now, with these estimates, the pilot doesn’t really know [the exact weight and mass center]. So when it comes to questions like, ‘Can I operate in certain conditions?’ and ‘Can I hover at a certain altitude?’ it is probably somewhat of a guessing game.” To remedy this, Rogers and his students in the Helicopter and Unmanned Systems Laboratory (HUSL) are working to create an avionics package that will provide precise weight and mass center information to the pilot in real time. By measuring the aircraft responses to the pilot’s control inputs, the onboard software package will estimate weight and mass center by using advanced computational methods. “This will provide the information he or she needs to make better decisions. What we are going to do is take these helicopters and drop weights off them when they are flying and see if we can filter the sensor data and the control inputs,” Rogers says. “Using Kalman filters [an algorithm using a series of measurements observed over time] and potentially more advanced methods, we will attempt to, in real time, estimate the weight change that has taken place.” Once that is determined, the avionics package would give the pilot an estimate of how much the helicopter weighs and where the mass center is located.
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Aerospace engineering graduate student Nate Miller is designing autonomous helicopter flight control laws to enable a wide variety of UAV research projects at the Helicopter and Unmanned Systems Lab.
Early attempts at solving the engineering problem Although Rogers’ current project is new to Texas A&M, he says it has been tried in various simulations and it has proven effective. When Rogers was conducting his postdoctoral research two years ago at the Georgia Institute of Technology, his adviser at the time proposed this system to a consortium of helicopter companies and to NASA, which partakes in a lot of rotorcraft research. But they were less than enthusiastic.
Because of the conditions helicopters fly in as well as the loads placed on them, certain parts require replacement and repair more often than others. Other benefits
“They said you can never make it work in practice,” Rogers says. “He found out later that at least two of the helicopter companies were pursuing those initiatives internally.”
The operating costs for helicopters are much higher than those of fixed-wing aircraft, such as airplanes. Because of the conditions helicopters fly in as well as the loads placed on them, certain parts require replacement and repair more often than others.
Being spurned didn’t cause them to shut down shop. Instead, it only motivated them even more, and Rogers has brought that passion to succeed with him to Texas A&M and has instilled it in his students.
Rogers contends that his research will help in the area of maintenance as well. Having exact weights, rather than just estimates, means that certain parts of the vehicle would not need to be replaced as often.
“Our attitude was, ‘Let’s do this and let’s make it work and show everybody that it can work in practice,’” Rogers says. “That is the beauty of having these helicopter vehicles that we have in the HUSL. We can take these ideas that everybody agrees work in simulation and show that they do work in practice.”
“There are certain life-limited parts in a helicopter that, based on how long it has been operated and at what weight it has flown, have to be replaced,” Rogers says. “If we can extend the lifetime of these parts, we can reduce operating costs. That would be one of the huge benefits.” O
Dr. Jonathan Rogers
Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor 979.862.3413 jrogers@aero.tamu.edu husl.tamu.edu
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By Lesley Kriewald
Walking Building two-legged robots that can walk—like humans
Science fiction has long promised two-legged, humanlike robots that can walk among us, but those are not yet reality. Self-described sci-fi buff Aaron Ames, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is building the robots himself.
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Q&A
The goal of this research laboratory is trying to get humanlike, robotic walking. What does that mean?
the potential to surpass wheeled robots, but walking robots require a lot of sophistication that’s just not yet present.
Humans are incredibly efficient at negotiating diverse terrain, and robots don’t have that capacity yet, especially two-legged robots. There are a million different robots being built all over the world, but they all walk only on flat ground with really stiff gaits.
So how are you studying human walking? How do you find that essential information about human movement that you are applying to robots?
We are trying to discover what humans do when they walk, to get that essential information needed to get efficient robotic walking. And not only efficient but also extensible, so we can eventually do things such as climb stairs. In the end, what we want is a robot that can go into a disaster area—say, a rubble-strewn area—and get through there in a way that wheeled robots can’t. Walking robots have 26
AMBER 2.0, the second robot Ames and students have built in the A&M Bipedal Experimental Robotics (AMBER) Lab, exhibits more advanced walking behaviors than its predecessor, AMBER 1.0.
Motion capture is actually how all this got started. In fact, it got started about two years ago with an experiment at Berkeley where we did some motion capture of human walking. We’re really coming up with a formal description of walking. By looking at the data, we found that humans do very interesting things when they walk, and in fact humans display this very simple behavior in the end. After some data analysis, we found that humans basically act like mass-spring damper systems, the simplest example of a mechanical system. Despite all this complexity going on, humans fall into this simple behavior.
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That’s a good thing, because there’s a sort of hierarchical control in humans where, when we learn to do something very well, we basically move all that processing down to pattern generators in our spinal cords. So we don’t really need our brains to walk, which is why we can still walk if we’re texting or reading or doing something else. You don’t need vision or anything. What do you need all that cognition for? You need it to switch between different behaviors. If you don’t see steps coming and you take a step off a step, you have that surprised feeling of falling when, suddenly, your body realizes it’s not doing what it’s meant to be doing. So we have to look at human data. But robots are so finicky, so if we took that human data and just put it into these robotic legs, it wouldn’t work because these legs aren’t in humanlike proportions. The robot legs would maybe move through the oscillations in the right way, but the robot wouldn’t actually be able to sustain walking. So we look to human data and process that data to extract the essential information about walking. Once we have that information, we encode that in our robots. All our robots use to get this walking is human data. That’s the only input to the system. So if you want a robot to do any human behavior, all you have to do is watch a human do it, apply this algorithm to get that, and the robot does it. And we’ve done this with stair climbing now in simulation, going up and down stairs, walking on flat ground, stopping, and we’re going to start doing things like running and turning. We have started to build up this template of behaviors. So that’s where humans play a role; they’re directly involved in this.
What kinds of robots are you using in your lab? We’ve built our own robots here, really just pairs of legs. What’s interesting about our first robot, AMBER 1.0 (named for our lab, the A&M Bipedal Experimental Robotics Lab), is that the motor being used to drive this robot is about the size of a C battery. Imagine how efficient your walk would have to be if your muscles were the size of a battery. Rather than overdesign this thing with huge motors, we’re trying to get very efficient walking. That makes things tougher because when there are uneven surfaces, or when things don’t happen exactly the way you think they will, then the robot will fall.
And because it’s not the most human-looking rig in the world, we also bought a NAO robot. This is a total humanoid robot, and we’re applying the same kind of methods on this to try to achieve walking. It’s a little less fun in some ways—it’s a closed platform, and we can’t build it from scratch because we don’t know every component in it—but it is an easy way to try out some things really quickly on many more degrees of freedom. I have some research collaborations with NASA in Houston; they’re actually building a humanoid robot, an actual full-fledged biped. We will have to come in without having designed or built the robot and apply all our methods to it, so playing with this NAO platform that was designed by somebody else gives us a feeling as to how we could do that with NASA’s robot.
If you want a robot to do any human behavior, all you have to do is watch a human do it, apply this algorithm to get that, and the robot does it. So that’s where humans play a role; they’re directly involved in this. You mentioned collaborating with NASA. Is space travel or exploration a possible application for walking robots? Yes! A very cool possible application for bipedal robots is space exploration. I don’t think we’re going back to Mars anytime soon as humans, but we are sending robots there. What ended up making Spirit and Opportunity and other space robots and rovers fail is that they can’t get around very well. They got stuck in the soil and had trouble moving around. The Curiosity rover that landed on Mars in August promises to have more mobility than previous rovers, but it’s fundamentally limited because it is wheeled. Legs have the potential to get the scientists to the places where they can make the discoveries they really want to make—going through the polar ice caps or going down into craters. There’s a huge potential there.
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The researchers evaluate AMBER 1.0’s motion on a computer (left) while the robotic legs “walk” on a treadmill (right) .
So the advantage of robots on legs over wheels is clear. What’s the advantage of having robots on two legs instead of four (or even more)? Bipeds do allow you to go places even the quadrupeds can’t. But there’s a more important reason than that: If we really wanted this technology in terms of just robots, maybe four legs would be okay and four-leg robots would be built. But understanding human motion, human-leg motion, means that we can apply these ideas to places where humans and robots interact. So another big application area that we’re looking at is prosthetic design. If you understand exactly how a human walks, and you can realize that in robotic motion in a very precise fashion, then you can imagine building prosthetic devices that allow humans to do all those things. Especially for double amputees, let’s say, who have huge mobility issues. Even with the current state of prosthetics, double amputees have to use canes to get around, and it’s very difficult.
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It’s amazing because double amputees really want to try out these things because it’s so hard for them to do anything in their everyday lives. So we can take care of two birds with one stone: We’re building robots that can do amazing things, and that gives us the potential to build prosthetic devices such as exoskeletons, rehabilitation devices and orthotics—there’s a whole wealth of applications if you understand how bipeds locomote. So these robotic legs walking in place on a treadmill are the simplest model to understand before we move to robotic legs that actually can move forward. The elemental unit here is human data, so it is not surprising that this movement is fairly human looking. We are trying to merge human data, and that actually feeds into the prosthetics and everything else because you can look at the behavior of a healthy human leg and try to mimic that behavior directly through these formal methods.
engineeringmagazine enginee ringmagazine.tam .tamu u.ed .e du u
So what brought you to robots? Science fiction. I’m a huge sci-fi buff. I probably have thousands of sci-fi books on my shelves, and I’ve just been fascinated by making robots that can do what humans do. It’s funny: Even in my application to graduate school, I said I wanted to work on bipedal robots. And then in graduate school, I studied formal math and theory so that I was finally able to take all those tools and come back to robotic walking again the way I really wanted to do it. And what I always wanted to do was really understand it. I don’t want to just make it walk. I want to know exactly why it’s walking. What are those fundamental mechanisms that humans use? And the amazing thing is that humans do something that is incredibly simple. We discovered recently that humans basically act like masses and springs. That’s what we do. Despite all these complexities that we have, when we settle into something very simple, we display this elementary behavior. And it’s that understanding that allows us to understand this robotic walking. We can use that and basically make the robot do the same thing, and turn it into thousands of lines of code, and then the robot starts to walk. You can see it on the knee behavior of these legs: There’s a vibration after the foot strikes the ground. The “knee” is absorbing that impact that occurs with every step. Walking really is this delicate balance, too—being on the verge of being unstable. That’s what makes it really hard. Walking can be described as controlled falling. Humans sort of throw their legs forward and just know that they’re going to catch themselves. That’s what makes it so difficult to do on robots.
We’re building robots that can do amazing things, and that gives us the potential to build prosthetic devices such as exoskeletons, rehabilitation devices, and orthotics— there’s a whole wealth of applications if you understand how bipeds locomote. What are some of the hurdles to traversing flat ground or going over rocky surfaces? Where is your research going next? Our first goal is to start to get other behaviors like walking up and down stairs. There’s a difference between steady-state human behaviors—things that we do on a regular basis, such as climbing stairs— and walking over rocks. AMBER 2.0, our second robot, walks off the treadmill and does more interesting walking behaviors, moving forward as it walks in a circle. We’ll determine how to extrapolate all this knowledge to get to things like stepping over stones and walking on uneven terrain. And then you need a visual processing system in the robot. So there’s a whole process going on here. But eventually, I think all that will allow us to understand exactly how to navigate any environment by essentially extrapolating between all these behaviors. Yes, there are huge challenges, but extrapolation is what we’re counting on. Once we understand all these basic things, then we can potentially look at a human going through a rubble-strewn area and how a human handles an uneven area, and then get the robot to operate the same way. And then the robots will be able to switch between all these behaviors, and suddenly you’re much closer to having robots able to do these things that science fiction promised me when I was growing up. That’s the goal. And as far as I know, no other methods used today really have that extensibility. I think it’s fair to say that this is the first one that’s really able to do that. O
“A very cool possible application for bipedal robots is space exploration.”
Dr. Aaron Ames
Mechanical Engineering Electrical & Computer Engineering Assistant Professor 979.845.5243 aames@tamu.edu
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Zhu–ming around the
Globe 30
engineeringmagazine .tam u .ed u
Ecu New Indo Aus Colo Chin Mal Tha Indo Alas Los San Hou
By Kara Bounds Socol
Ding Zhu knew well before leaving home that she wouldn’t be the most beloved presenter on the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) lecture circuit. But she would generate some of the most controversial conversation.
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Zhu
, a Texas A&M associate professor and the W.D. Von Gonten Faculty Fellow in Petroleum Engineering, was one of more than 100 hopefuls for an SPE distinguished lecturer slot. After an SPE panel chose her abstract on inflow control devices (ICDs) for consideration, Zhu went through an intensive interview process and was one of the 30 selected to give lectures to SPE groups worldwide. She recently completed her 22-stop tour.
During her eight years at Texas A&M, Zhu has focused her research on using modern technology to increase oil and gas production. Zhu’s audiences varied from seven people in Hobbs, N.M., to some 250 in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. Although some stops were somewhat close to home, others were as far away as Melbourne, Australia, and as remote as Balikpapan, Indonesia. As Zhu has spoken to SPE groups around the globe, she’s found that hostility toward the subject of her presentation is a worldwide phenomenon. “Some people shut down when they hear the letters ‘ICD,’” Zhu says of the device’s detractors. “They just think you’re trying to sell them something that doesn’t work. They don’t actually look at the principle of how it works.” But for the most part, audience members were willing to hear what she had to say. “In the majority of the cities, there was hot discussion,” Zhu says. “But they thanked me for the discussion at the end and said they really understood ICDs more.”
ICDs: inflow control devices An ICD is designed to maximize oil recovery in long horizontal wells by controlling the flow rate of oil from the reservoir to the well.
PeopleneedtounderstandwhenanICDwillhelp. So why the fuss over ICDs?
Some producers see an ICD as a magical guarantee for increased production. Others will say they’re extremely expensive, difficult to install and maintain, and fail to encourage oil flow. In short, when they invested in the device, they felt like they were duped. On both counts, Zhu disagrees.
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Understanding ICDs
An ICD is an intelligent completion hardware designed to maximize oil recovery in long horizontal wells. Oil flowing too quickly or too slowly from the reservoir to the well has a negative impact on recovery. An ICD regulates that flow rate. The ICD also adds to the producing life of the well by preventing “coning”—the penetration of water or gas into the oil column during uncontrolled production.
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But for ICDs to work, Zhu says, they must be used only under the right conditions. These include either a very long horizontal well with a great deal of oil or very thin oil reservoirs with a gas cap on top and a water aquifer underneath. If the well is too short, she explains, the ICD will not perform as promised. “The catch is for people to understand exactly when you can use an ICD to help you,” she explains. And she should know. During her eight years at Texas A&M, Zhu has focused her research on using modern technology to increase oil and gas production. This research encompasses techniques to access shale gas and oil, specialized methods required for heavy oil, and improved procedures to access “tight gas”—natural gas reservoirs locked in extremely hard rock. Zhu has developed several computer software applications for intelligent control of wells—using computer sensors to improve production. Classrooms and oil fields all over the world use PPS, a production engineering software package she developed.
A Promising Future
When Zhu announced her selection as a distinguished lecturer, a friend warned that by presenting her abstract, she’d be making enemies of the major oil companies. But Zhu takes a different approach: “If I’m wrong, I’d like to hear why you think I’m wrong.” On the SPE tour, she got her wish. But instead of being offended by detractors, she found that the discussions her presentations started were one of the things she liked most about the lecture tour. She also says she enjoyed getting to know SPE members from around the globe and was encouraged by the enthusiasm of many of the younger members. In Balikpapan, for instance, most attendees had been in the oil industry for five years or less. “They really want to connect with SPE,” Zhu says. “We had a lot of discussion about how young people in the industry should look at the future.” She had a similar experience in Colombia, where about 30 students traveled by bus to a remote location to attend the SPE event and then stayed two hours after her presentation.
“Colombian young people are very aggressive, in a good way,” Zhu says. “They love their society, they’re technically involved, they want to help their people. When I look at them, I think their country is going to have a good future because they love it so much.” She felt similar feelings of promise when speaking to groups in other remote corners of the globe. “You hear people speaking all kinds of languages, and they’re all looking for something better—not just for themselves but for their whole society,” Zhu says. “I’d think, ‘I’m so proud to be with this group of people.’”
A Big Milestone
The travel schedule of an SPE distinguished lecturer is grueling enough, but because of her teaching schedule, Zhu had to cram a year’s worth of stops into six months. Her sightseeing opportunities, then, were extremely limited.
Ecu New Indo Aus Colo Chin Mal Tha Indo Alas Los San Hou
“You hear people speaking all kinds of languages, and they’re all looking for something better—not just for themselves but for their whole society. I’d think, ‘I’m so proud to be with this group of people.’” During the Asian portion of her tour, Zhu visited China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Australia in two and a half weeks. Even worse was hitting Alaska, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Houston in four days. “There were times when I got up, went to the talk, then went directly to the airport,” she says. For her presentation in London, for instance, she arrived at the airport at 1 p.m., attended the SPE event from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., and then took the first flight back the following morning to teach her class at Texas A&M. Constant travel, sleep deprivation, time away from family—these were all downsides to Zhu’s six-month tour. Ultimately, though, the people she met and the honor of being singled out by SPE outweighed the frustrations. “When you look back,” she says, “you see that it’s a big milestone in anyone’s career.” O
Dr. Ding Zhu, P.E.
Petroleum Engineering Associate Professor and the W.D. Von Gonten Faculty Fellow 979.458.4522 ding.zhu@pe.tamu.edu
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enginee ringmagazine .tam u .e engineeringmagazine .ed du
By Lesley Kriewald By Lesley Kriewald
Each year in the United States, congestive heart failure affects more than 5 million people, and more than 500,000 new cases are diagnosed. On top of that, about 300,000 patients per year decompensate, or experience a loss of function in their hearts, to the point of needing a heart transplant. Unfortunately, only about 3,000 hearts are typically available on the national transplant list. Only the sickest, most desperate patients make the cut. John Criscione says he thinks he can help the rest. “Everyone has their own heart,” says Criscione, associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “We want to get theirs to work right.”
MECHANICS Restoring proper motion to save heart muscle
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Correcting motion
Restoring proper motion
“The heart never stops moving,” Criscione says. “So if the mechanics are different than what happens in a healthy heart, then that change in motion can kill the muscle. So motion is the most important factor in keeping heart muscle alive.”
“To test that, you’d have to be able to change the motion of the heart,” Criscione says. “Therapy could be beneficial to patients, but we need devices to help correct that bad motion.”
The endeavor started with the idea that motion was a key factor in heart growth.
Criscione is an expert in cardiac mechanics, the study of force and motion in the heart. In all muscle, he says, the type of force is tension, but motion differs in different types of muscle. In skeletal muscle, motion can consist of isometric contraction or elongation. In heart muscle, though, contraction is the only option: Other types of motion lead to cardiac muscle death.
“The heart never stops moving, so if the mechanics are different than what happens in a healthy heart, then that change in motion can kill the muscle. So motion is the most important factor in keeping heart muscle alive.” “The heart always does positive work,” Criscione says, “taking blood and ejecting it against pressure. That contraction is the key motion for the heart.” Heart disease, he says, is characterized by bad motion. With the rise of AED (automated external defibrillator) devices, aspirin therapy and education, more people are surviving heart attacks than ever. But the blockage in the coronary artery that caused the heart attack actually changes the motion of the heart, so surviving a heart attack is the number-one factor in end-stage heart failure. “Imagine,” Criscione says, “if you lost the use of your quadriceps, what would your gait look like?”
Dr. John C. Criscione
Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor 979.845.5428 jccriscione@tamu.edu
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Arrhythmias, or irregular heartbeats, can also lead to blockages and movement changes. Drugs can help restore proper motion because they lower the amount of work the heart needs to do. But, Criscione says, this approach doesn’t correct bad motion and only delays heart failure.
Criscione says he wonders whether that bad motion in the heart is not a symptom of disease but rather a source.
Criscione says that rehabilitating the heart after a heart attack might be possible—a kind of cardiac physical therapy. “When something goes wrong with joints and muscles, we need mechanics to get back into shape,” Criscione says. “After a car accident or surgery, physical therapy can help repair the joint to become more functional. I think we can do the same for the heart.” Criscione says such cardiac physical therapy would change the load on the heart, thereby changing the heart’s abnormal mechanics to guide good heart growth and operation. To that end, Criscione has developed a device that fits around the heart. Pumping air into the chamber around the heart squeezes the heart and pushes blood out. Releasing the air allows the heart to expand and fill with blood. Implanted after all other therapies have failed and patients are incapacitated from end-stage heart failure, the device could restore proper motion to the heart. Criscione’s invention modulates the growth of the heart but doesn’t replace the heart or its action. And unlike current devices on the market, Criscione’s heart-assist device does not come in contact with blood, which means less risk of infection or stroke. “Blood is the most aggressive organ in the body,” Criscione says. “Blood is very reactive because it needs to be.”
Learning process
In 2004, Criscione founded CorInnova Inc., a biomedical device startup focused on developing mechanisms to help with congestive heart failure. His company received $500,000 from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund in 2006 to commercialize the heart therapy device, allowing the company to grow and develop more.
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This experience has translated to the classroom, where Criscione teaches his students about regulatory affairs, design and development, preclinical testing, and clinical trials—things students will need to know to succeed in the biomedical device industry.
The technology work is complete in terms of proof of concept. Still to come are manufacturing, testing and clinical trials. “The idea is a critical step,” he says, “but it’s just a baby step in the process.” As far as getting investors in CorInnova, Criscione says potential investors look at the commitment and experience of the people behind the idea first, and the idea itself second: The best idea with the wrong people won’t succeed because making mistakes is too easy in a highly complex and regulated marketplace such as health care. But, he says, even a mediocre idea can succeed if the people driving it are motivated and have succeeded in prior endeavors. Such individuals already know the potential pitfalls and have successful approaches to shepherd technologies through preclinical testing and premarket approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In fact, the process thus far has been quite an education in commercialization, Criscione says. “The risk in medical devices is the clinical trial and getting FDA approval because these are expensive, uncertain barriers to market that have to be completed before any revenue can be generated,” he says. “If it succeeds in clinical trials, then the market will likely adopt it. “In other technology areas like consumer electronics, there is no such barrier to market release for
new products. The risk there is primarily related to market adoption.” This experience has translated to the classroom, where Criscione teaches his students about regulatory affairs, design and development, preclinical testing, and clinical trials—things students will need to know to succeed in the biomedical device industry.
“We’ve done a lot as a medical community to save people, which is good, but now I think we can restore proper motion so people will live even longer.” Meanwhile, the work continues. The next step is design manufacturing and preclinical testing, and to complete this preclinical work and begin clinical trials—which can last up to two years themselves—could take three years. All told, it may be another five years until the device is ready for market. That may sound like an eternity, but that’s typical for biomedical devices, Criscione says, which usually take 10 to 15 years to come to market. “We’ve done a lot as a medical community to save people, which is good,” Criscione says. “But now more people are surviving with damaged heart muscle, and I think we can restore proper motion so people will live even longer.” O
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ASEE President Walt Buchanan: EducationLeader,LifelongLearner The man leading the nation’s most influential engineering education organization is perfect for the job. His insatiable love of learning has led him to his newest academic endeavor, taking the helm of the American Society for Engineering Education.
1962
1963 Aerospace Engineer, Martin Company— systems analysis for Titan II missile
Dreams of a trip to Russia, starts saving money
1963 B.A., Mathmatics & Russian Minors in Astronomy, Physics and German 38
1965
Engineering Officer, United States Navy— participated in courts martial
1970 Audit Coordinator for Indiana State Tax Board
1964 Aerospace Engineer, Boeing Company—systems analyst for Saturn V Rocket Program engineeringmagazine .tam u .ed u
By Kara Bounds Socol When Walter Buchanan attended his first American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) annual conference in 1985, he was a junior faculty member at Indiana University– Purdue University Indianapolis, and a Texas A&M dean was soon to be ASEE president. The ASEE annual conference returns to Atlanta in June 2013, and once again a Texas A&M professor will be president. This time, Buchanan himself will fill that position. “Never could I imagine that the next time I went to the conference in Atlanta, I’d be president,” says Buchanan, head of Texas A&M’s Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution. In its 120-year history, ASEE has elected four Texas A&M faculty members to its presidency. Only Penn State exceeds that number, with five presidents. Buchanan is only the second society president from the field of engineering technology.
When the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the space race was on. This new era in engineering required a new type of engineer. Since the 1940s, a basic form of engineering technology had been offered as a two-year technical program. But now the aeronautical industry needed people with the hands-on skills of an engineering technician coupled with the mathematical skills of a traditional engineer. The four-year engineering technology degree thus emerged. Buchanan is a product of the space race era and knows firsthand how crucial the skills of a four-year engineering technology graduate can be.
Engineering technology graduates apply modern technology to real-world technological problems, Buchanan explains. And students in the partner field of industrial distribution study technological subjects to succeed in manufacturing sales. Engineering didn’t always interest Buchanan, but mathematics did. At Indiana University, he double-majored in mathematics and Russian and minored in astronomy, physics and German. When he graduated in 1963, the Martin Co. immediately offered him a job as an aerospace engineer. This first job, though, was not the result of the space race, but rather of the Cold War. Perhaps nothing symbolized the fear of nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union more than the 54 Titan II missile sites on alert across the United States. The Titan II could launch in 58 seconds and could deliver a nuclear warhead to targets more than 6,300 miles away.
1979
1973
Electronics Engineer, Naval Avionics Center
Attorney, Veterans Administration; began studying patent law
J.D., Law
In its 120-year history, ASEE has elected four Texas A&M faculty members to its presidency. Buchanan is only the second society president from the field of engineering technology.
Doing what you enjoy
Technological problem solvers
1973
Engineering technology, Buchanan says, prepares students to be technological problem solvers. The field focuses more on actual application than does traditional engineering, so its graduates are typically the ones closest to the production process. Their jobs often involve using both engineering principles and modern technology to improve production.
1978
Member of Indiana State Bar
1982 B.S.E., Interdisciplinary Engineering
1984 M.S.E., Interdisciplinary Engineering
1986 Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Technology Indiana U.–Purdue U. Indianapolis
1985 Registered Professional Engineer, State of Indiana
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Education Leader, As a young engineer, Buchanan did system analysis on the Titan II missile program. But when Martin did not receive a Titan II followup contract, Buchanan moved to the Boeing Co., where an even more exciting project was taking shape: the Saturn V rocket program.
In 1970, Buchanan began working as an audit coordinator for the Indiana State Tax Board by day, and he studied law by night. Three years later, he graduated from law school and worked in administrative law for the Veterans Administration in Indianapolis.
In his job as a systems analyst, Buchanan served as a mathematics liaison between the Saturn V programmers and electrical engineers. In 1969, this rocket would launch the spacecraft that would land men on the moon. But by then, Buchanan had moved on to his next challenge.
But once again, Buchanan became restless. So he began taking night courses in engineering, thinking he would go into patent law. However, he enjoyed engineering so much that he never went back to law and went to work as an electronics engineer for the Naval Avionics Center.
“I didn’t consider it work. I treated it more like a hobby. If you do what you enjoy doing, it’s not work.” In 1965, the Vietnam War was raging and Buchanan wanted to be on the nuclear engineering side of things. He enlisted in the Navy, eventually serving on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, his last billet being to serve as its gunnery officer. As an officer, Buchanan participated in courts martial when soldiers under his command got into trouble. The legal process fascinated him. Upon returning home, he decided, he would become an attorney.
1993
“I didn’t consider it work,” Buchanan says of his educational pursuits. “I treated it more like a hobby. If you do what you enjoy doing, it’s not work.”
Influencing engineering education
With engineering degrees in hand, Buchanan says he was ready to teach others what real life had taught him.
1996
1994
Assistant Professor and Coordinator, Electrical Engineering Technology Associate Degree Program University of Central Florida
Registered Professional Engineer, State of Florida
1993 Ph.D., Higher Education
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By 1993, Buchanan had earned five degrees (four of them in night school): a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and Russian, a law degree, a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a master’s degree in engineering, and a doctoral degree in higher education. He’s a member of the Indiana State Bar and is a registered professional engineer in six states.
1995
Associate Professor and Chair, Engineering Technology and Industrial Studies Middle Tennessee State University
Registered Professional Engineer, State of Oregon
1997 Registered Professional Engineer, State of Tennessee
1996 Dean of the School of Engineering and Industrial Technologies Oregon Institute of Technology engineeringmagazine .tam u .ed u
Lifelong Learner Beginning as an assistant professor at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, Buchanan moved up the academic ladder, teaching at four more universities before securing the top engineering technology post at Texas A&M in 2005. In June 2012, the J.R. Thompson Endowed Chair took his post as ASEE president. Focusing on the teaching of engineering and engineering technology, ASEE was founded more than a century ago. Although some engineering faculty members are involved in the organization, Buchanan says, many ASEE members work in engineering technology. “In engineering technology, the focus is more on teaching than on research,” he says. “Our faculty on the average teach two times as many classes as engineering faculty, but we only do half the amount of research.” While serving as president, Buchanan will travel extensively for a year, speaking at university conferences around the globe. He says he’d also like to use his influence to help students afford college, particularly through online courses and transfers from two-year to four-year programs. Also critical, Buchanan says, is to excite elementary and secondary schoolchildren about engineering. He hopes to do so by
But the wait will soon be over. In November, Buchanan will travel to Kazan, Russia, as part of his ASEE duties.
By 1993, Buchanan had earned five degrees: a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and Russian, a law degree, a bachelor’s degree in engineering, a master’s degree in engineering, and a doctoral degree in higher education. “I never dreamed that when I went to Russia, it would be 20 years after the fall of the Soviet Union and they would be paying me to go there,” he says. O
J.R. Thompson Chair and Department Head, Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Texas A&M University
Registered Professional Engineer, State of Massachusetts
Professor and Director, School of Engineering Technology Northeastern University
Buchanan jokes about how his life has come full circle since he earned his first bachelor’s degree. As a college senior, he was saving up for a trip to Russia after graduation. But as so often happens, life put his plans on hold—for almost five decades.
2005
2000
1999
encouraging ASEE members to become active in these schools, whether through classroom presentations or simply by judging science fairs.
2005 Registered Professional Engineer, State of Texas
2012
Dr. Walter Buchanan, P.E. Engineering Technology & Industrial Distribution Department Head & J.R. Thompson Endowed Chair 979.862.4945 buchanan@entc.tamu.edu
ASEE President Travel to Kazan, Russia Dream realized! 41
A new Pushing the limits of touch to guide individuals in stressful
situations
Imagine being a firefighter
trapped inside a burning building. The smoke is so thick that you can’t see, and you struggle to find your way to the nearest exit and safety. 42
engineeringmagazine .tam u .ed u
By Tim Schnettler
sense of direction Or imagine being a soldier in enemy territory who has lost radio contact with your fellow soldiers, and you are searching to find your way back to camp. Now imagine someone outside the burning building or someone back at the military base camp guiding you to safety as if a hand were on your shoulder, steering you in the right direction. It may sound a bit farfetched, but it might not be as unbelievable as it sounds thanks to the work of Texas A&M University professor Thomas Ferris. Ferris, an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, is developing a communication system that, using the sense of touch, would prove invaluable in such scenarios.
“We are exploring the sense of touch as a communication channel. We are already familiar with technologies that use this channel in very basic ways, like when we set our cell phone to vibrate.”
“Our research is the next frontier in the area of multimodal communications, meaning communicating with people via multiple different senses, which can be very advantageous for human operators in certain environments,” says Ferris. “In particular, we are exploring the sense of touch as a communication channel. We are already familiar with technologies that use this channel in very basic ways, like when we set our cell phone to vibrate. We then receive haptic or tactile messages communicating that there is an incoming call.”
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Taking advantage of the sense of touch
Ferris and his students in the Human Factors and Cognitive Systems Lab are pushing the limits of what can be done with the sense of touch while taking advantage of some of its unique characteristics. “The sense of touch is really great for giving directions to somebody,” says Ferris. “I can give you navigation instructions orally by saying, ‘Look to your left and take 10 paces.’ I could draw you a map and give it to you. But the most efficient way would be if I could put my hands on your shoulders and essentially push and pull you. “Using the sense of touch, we can direct people with simple instruction. If you feel a vibration or a push on one side of your body, move in that direction. It is stimulus–response. Very little thought is required in interpreting and acting on the message, so people can react quickly to the message without it demanding too much attention. There are a lot of applications where you need to move somebody as quickly and efficiently as possible.” To accomplish that goal, Ferris and his students have come up with the CHIAD (Creative Haptic Interaction At a Distance) system. The program supports the ability to essentially tap someone on the shoulder, guide the person in a certain direction, or draw a complex shape on someone’s back—all while standing across the room or even in a different building. In its early stages, the CHIAD system involves an athletic compression shirt worn by an individual called the “actor.” Vibrating devices on various spots on the shirt allow for the ability to “tap” the actor and move him or her in one direction or the other.
Tactors are small transducers, designed to optimize skin response to vibration. These devices are used to provide communication to replace or supplement audio and visual input, especially under circumstances where audio and visual cues can be missed. The “tap” is made using a simple and cost-effective Wii remote that is in the hands of an individual called the “director.” Using the remote, the director simply gestures in the direction the actor should go. The force of the director’s gesture is also mapped to the intensity of the vibration, so the actor can be gently prodded along or can feel the need to move with various degrees of urgency. “I could essentially gesture as if I’m tapping someone on the shoulder with the Wii remote and the actor would feel that on the shoulder from a distance,” says Ferris. “We can also have the actor return a haptic message with the use of a second system—something natural and intuitive, like a pat on the back, to communicate that the signal was received. The underlying goal is, we want people to be able to interact without thinking too much.”
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Easing fears in stressful situations
Allowing such simple interaction, Ferris says, would aid in situations where stress and fear would overcome the person, making clear thinking difficult. For example, Ferris cites his daily route in getting to his office. Every day he parks in the same spot, enters his building through the same doors and proceeds to his office. The repetitiveness allows him to basically go through the process without thinking about it. But add another element such as a fire outside his office, and things could change. “If there is a fire outside my office door and my life is at stake and I am stressed out about it, that tends to narrow your cognition,” says Ferris. “Even though I know there are numerous routes that I could possibly take to escape the building, it will be difficult for me to think of anything other than the same familiar route I take every day. [In stressful situations] people tend to have a very hard time thinking outside the box or outside of what is very familiar to them. “The underlying goal is, we want people to be able to interact without thinking too much, especially when their cognition is limited due to high stress levels. That is one of the beautiful things about the sense of touch. We can interact with each other without having to think too much about encoding a message before I send it, or about decoding the message if I am receiving it.”
Military interest
The military can also use Ferris’ system on the battlefield, which according to Ferris could help minimize threats to soldiers’ safety. CHIAD can also reduce the time for the commander to guide the soldier away from such dangers, and it allows the soldiers to keep their eyes and ears focused on other things of interest. Ferris says that commanders would have “a vantage point that allows them to see things that a soldier cannot see, as well as additional sources of information about the area. They can see these constantly changing areas of threat and where their objective destination might be. Right now, soldiers receive their coordinates auditorily and then consult their GPS. That takes some time. “If we can shorten the time it takes for someone to communicate the message as well as the time it takes for someone to receive the message and act on it, then that can be a big
“The underlying goal is, we want people to be able to interact without thinking too much, especially when their cognition is limited due to high stress levels.” difference in situations like this. If somebody could just gesture and say, ‘Follow my cues,’ and people could respond that quickly, it would be a big benefit.” Having seen the benefits of haptic display systems, the military has begun testing several different prototypes. Their systems, however, primarily use a belt to relay the vibrations, which limits the expressiveness of the system. It also adds more to a part of the soldier’s uniform that already holds several other items. These systems also tend to be automatically linked to other equipment such as a GPS and therefore don’t support the type of person-toperson interaction that the CHIAD system was designed to support. “They see similar advantages to the sense of touch,” Ferris says. “What we can add is having the communication aspect, and also ours is not limited to one location on the body. CHIAD can be reconfigured fairly quickly to present vibrations anywhere on the torso, and other garments can be incorporated to present signals to other locations if the application requires it.” O
Dr. Thomas Ferris
Industrial & Systems Engineering Assistant Professor 979.458.2340 tferris@tamu.edu
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Enginee Texas A&M University at Qatar:
Focus on Women in
Engineering
Shaymaa F. Khalifa Class of 2010 electrical engineering major 46
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eering By Gwendolyn Brown Lucas
ENGINEERING has always been a
male-dominated
profession.
According to the American Society for Engineering Education, women accounted for 18 percent of engineering bachelor’s degrees and 22 percent of master’s and doctoral degrees in 2011. And in U.S. universities, women make up 13.8 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty.
graduate Amira Redissi. And Mariam Al Bishri, petroleum engineering major, named Her Highness, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, as her role model. Her Highness Sheikha Moza is chairperson of the Qatar Foundation and was instrumental in overhauling primary and secondary education in Qatar.
Kathy Banks, vice chancellor and dean of engineering, says that she plans to address this gender disparity during her leadership of the Texas A&M Engineering Program, which includes the university’s branch campus in Doha, Qatar.
“She’s done so much for women in Qatar,” Al Bishri says. “Now I want to contribute to Qatar and give back to the community that helped me study engineering.”
“It’s unfortunate,” she says, “that young girls often are not encouraged to enter the engineering profession. Anyone who has passion for creativity and learning and discovery, anyone who wants to change the world for the better, should consider a career in engineering.” Qatar’s leaders share this viewpoint and recognize that the country must encourage all talented young people, male and female, to pursue technical careers. As Ibrahim Ibrahim, secretary general for the General Secretariat for Development Planning and economic adviser to His Highness the Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, says, “Demand for engineers is high, and women are integral in filling that need.” To encourage young women to consider a future in engineering, Texas A&M at Qatar cultivates relationships through community outreach. The Office of Student and Community Relations hosts informational sessions at local high schools, educating students about engineering careers and the Texas A&M at Qatar application process. A love of math and science and her admiration for successful professional men and women inspired electrical engineering
Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering Kathy Banks, visits with Assistant Professor Mashhad Fahes (far left) and petroleum students at Texas A&M University at Qatar in Doha. Students pictured from left are Umaira Nisa, Mahida Waheed and Andrea Ayala, all class of 2013.
These young women say they chose Texas A&M at Qatar for a variety of reasons. “Texas A&M at Qatar is turning young talents into engineers,” says Redissi, who opted to study at Texas A&M at Qatar because of the university’s warm atmosphere, excellent faculty–student ratio, and faculty and staff support. State-of-the-art laboratory equipment, hands-on experience and carefully designed curriculum also made Texas A&M at Qatar an attractive choice for her.
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Shaikha J. Al-Suwaidi Class of 2011 electrical engineering major
Amna M. Murad Class of 2012 petroleum engineering major
Undergraduate enrollment by gender, Dwight Look College of Engineering
7,882 1,536
6,346
“Women are changing labels by pursuing engineering, and the best way we can serve the community is through science and technology.” The university also offers young women a stellar engineering education within the country. Secretary General Ibrahim says, “Some families don’t want to send their daughters to schools outside Qatar. Education City provides them a good opportunity to learn here.” Once they join the Texas A&M at Qatar student body, young women continue to create and expand educational resources for future female engineers. Recently, students and faculty organized a campus chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Worldwide, SWE has more than 20,000 collegeand professional-level members, and in 2009 the organization focused specific attention on the international arena. Nora Lin, an engineer with Northrop Grumman and 2010 SWE president, says, “SWE will continue to expand internationally and support the needs of our international members.”
“Learn your potential and never give up.” Undergraduate engineering enrollment by gender, USA
male 81.6% female 18.4% 48
Al Bishri, president of the university’s SWE student chapter, says the group has established ambitious goals, including educating female students about the workplace, facilitating interaction between students and professional engineers, encouraging informal mentoring among members, and contributing to the larger Qatari community. The group’s main community service component will be outreach to local elementary and high schools, encouraging girls to consider a future in engineering. Many Qatari girls attend all-female high schools, so the SWE chapter wants to help them acclimate to and thrive in Texas A&M at Qatar’s integrated classrooms. “Qatari girls are often quiet and shy, but they have hidden potential,” Al Bishri says. “We want to give those girls the green light.”
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Of Texas A&M at Qatar’s 294 current graduates, The female students of Texas A&M at Qatar 40 percent are female, and of those, 49 percent see their legacy stretching far into the future, are Qatari. but their choices are affecting other women’s decisions now. Al Bishri has already influThe women attending Texas A&M at Qatar set a enced two young girls in her family, both of high bar for themselves. Redissi says she believes whom are pursuing engineering. that, as a woman, she has some powerful qualities—determination, focus, patience and the “If you enjoy solving problems and making ability to work as part of a team—to offer her friends, then Texas A&M at Qatar is the place future employer. for you,” Redissi says. “Teamwork,” she says, “is the building block of engineering.” Redissi and electrical engineering senior Marwa Qaraqe say they both plan to attend graduate school. Qaraqe says she sees herself working in the oil and gas field or returning to Texas A&M at Qatar as a faculty member, and she says her family respects her goals. “My family is very optimistic and thinks I will accomplish so much,” she says.
Once they join the Texas A&M at Qatar student body, young women continue to create and expand educational resources for future female engineers. Recently, students and faculty organized a campus chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.
Qaraqe says she wants young women to understand that they aren’t required to follow These young women are also interested in history’s status quo but to realize that they can Qatar’s environment and renewable energy. adopt roles formerly open only to men. She asserts that engineering is a broad field and Al Bishri says, “I want to make sure we are doing offers opportunities for all interested women. everything we can for the environment.” Her final advice? As for setting goals, Ibrahim says, “Working gives [women] self-respect and a sense of achievement and is good for the country.”
“Learn your potential and never give up.” O
Undergraduate enrollment by gender,
These dedicated and motivated women will have an impact on Qatar’s cultural and economic future for years to come. Redissi says she believes that the Qatari community will benefit from economic and social diversity in this century.
Texas A&M at Qatar
469
“Women are changing labels by pursuing engineering,” she says, “and the best way we can serve the community is through science and technology.”
total
298
According to Ibrahim, Qatar aspires to be a role model for other countries in the region, and to do so, the country needs Qatari participation in the workforce. Currently, female workforce participation is climbing, but for that trend to continue, Ibrahim says the Qatari government must be proactive. “We don’t just want girls to become educated, but to actually participate in the workplace,” Ibrahim says. “The government will have to help with flextime, nurseries and more.”
male
171
female
Heba A. Alsaffar Class of 2011 electrical engineering major
Photos by Bryce Bridges 49
By Robert Burns
MATERIALS
FOR
IRRIGATION Determining the best irrigation canal liner for Texas soil
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Workers in Hidalgo County spread concrete over a synthetic canal liner made of polyester. (Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service photo by Askar Karimov)
Texas has an estimated 1.2 million acres of agricultural land irrigated via canals, many of which need renovation, according to a Texas A&M University irrigation expert.
Historically, irrigation canals were basically just earthen ditches, according to Guy Fipps, professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering and a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension irrigation engineer. But the burgeoning water shortages over the past 15 years have increased awareness of the need to reduce water loss from canals through seepage. Traditionally, the most common renovations were to replace smaller canals with pipelines and line larger canals with concrete, Fipps says. But lining canals with concrete is expensive and requires significant upkeep, particularly in Texas’ “shrink–swell” soils. However, today irrigation districts have options other than just concrete. “There is a revolution in materials sciences happening, with many new and innovative products coming on the market, including synthetic liners that are promoted for use in many applications,” Fipps says. These new synthetic materials offer better, cheaper choices than lining canals with
“There is a revolution in materials sciences happening, with many new and innovative products coming on the market, including synthetic liners that are promoted for use in many applications.” concrete alone, Fipps says. Choosing the right liner, however, is not a simple task. Some liners are more suited to a given situation—and an irrigation district’s budget. The choice of liner also involves tradeoffs, such as ease of installation, durability, resistance to human and animal traffic, and cost. To help irrigation districts make the best choices, Fipps and his associates recently completed a seven-year evaluation of nine synthetic canal liners in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. “Initially, we used a very simple visual rating system,” Fipps says. “However, we quickly noticed that exactly the same material would fail completely in one location while remaining in excellent condition in others. Thus, our visual rating system evolved significantly over time as we sought to document the causes of such site-specific performance.”
Dr. Guy Fipps, P.E.
Biological & Agricultural Engineering Professor and Extension Agricultural Engineer 979.845.7454 g-fipps@tamu.edu
Fipps and his team eventually settled on a twostep process, combining a visual rating scale and quantitative analysis. 51
“The rating gives us an overall indicator of the condition of each project, and how the material fares over time,” he says. “The quantitative analysis is used to interpret the ratings and to identify the factors that are likely causing lower ratings than would otherwise be expected.”
In August Fipps received the Advancement of Surface Irrigation Award from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers for his work advancing surface irrigation and saving water in Texas and abroad. The award documentation cites Fipps’ efforts in the Rio Grande Basin, where his work is credited with reducing water losses by irrigation districts by 240,000 acre-feet annually. (One acre-foot of water is equal to about 326,000 gallons.) Fipps was also recognized for his international work. Here, he consults with a farmer in Ghanzi Province of Afghanistan where for nine months in 2005 and 2006, he advised Afghans on issues related to water use, allocations and development.
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With decades of experience evaluating and improving Texas irrigation systems, Fipps and his team anticipated some of the factors affecting performance. Improper installation is one source of problems, he said. Irrigation districts try to keep their costs low to minimize the fees that farmers and other customers pay. Some districts choose to install liners themselves, leading to various problems if the staff is not sufficiently trained. Poor installation issues include poor anchoring of the liner at the top of the canal, improper seams of liners around gates, valves and other structures, and inadequate stretching of liners at installation. “Water seeping under the top anchor can result in floating and even buckling of concrete being used as a protective barrier,” Fipps says. “Proper seaming of materials around structures, gates and valves takes skill. District personnel may not have sufficient training or use the right products.” engineeringmagazine enginee ringmagazine .tam u .e .ed du
Other factors that influence liner choice are smoothness and stability of the material underneath the liner. “Some of the thinner liners definitely shouldn’t be used over cracked concrete, as they are easily pierced,” he says. And both human and animal traffic also turned out to be significant factors.
“The rating gives us an overall indicatoroftheconditionofeach project, and how the material fares over time. The quantitative analysis is used to interpret the ratings and to identify the factors that are likely causing lower ratings than would otherwise be expected.” “Do kids swim in the canals?” Fipps says. “Much of what we classified as ‘unintentional damage’ appeared to be caused by kids grabbing onto folds or loose spots in the liners while pulling themselves out of the canal.” Also, cattle hooves can puncture some of the thinner materials, he says. Mowing near where the liner is anchored to the top of the canal was responsible for other damage. “Then there’s the maintenance factor,” he says. “Timely maintenance and minor repairs can prevent small problems from becoming serious.” Fipps and his associates rated several types of liners to find the best overall renovation: a synthetic liner with a protective barrier on top of concrete, or shotcrete. Beyond that, it gets complicated, Fipps says, depending on kids, cows, mowing, installation expertise and, of course, money.
A&M System water center to focus on statewide issues Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp announced the formation of a new A&M System center to address multiple water issues in and develop solutions for Texas. Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) and Texas A&M University–San Antonio are collaborating on the development of the Water Conservation and Technology Center, which will support high-priority projects that focus on Texas’ water issues. “The state of Texas has a rich history that has always been linked to water—rights, conservation and control. This unique agency collaboration will lead to development of more efficiency and effectiveness in managing this vital resource,” Sharp says. Administered by the Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI), an entity of the A&M System, the center will increase the system’s ability to meet existing and emerging statewide needs in water conservation and technology, according to Neal Wilkins, TWRI director. “The center will accelerate the development and adoption of new and innovative technologies to solve emerging water problems and meet future water supply needs,” Wilkins says. The center includes a collaborative relationship with TEES through its Texas Center for Applied Technology and will be located at the TEES South Presa campus in San Antonio. TEES’ Cindy Wall says the center will target its work on four highpriority efforts: water conservation, water reuse, groundwater desalination, and energy development and water use. “The center will establish a team of scientists, engineers and water professionals dedicated to applied research and development, testing and validation, technology transfer, and training and extension education in these four areas,” Wall says. The center will work with industry, state and federal agencies, municipalities, trade associations, and other research institutions to undertake projects and develop solutions within these four areas.
“Also, there’s little difference between the cost of the various liners, but skill levels in the field vary widely,” he says. O 53
By Tim Schnettler
$100,0 54
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Saving energy–and money Continuous Commissioning process helps save more than $100 million in energy costs ®
000,000 W
ith tightened budgets and slashed funds, energy efficiency has been thrust to the forefront, and one entity of The Texas A&M University System is doing its part to help System members, as well as other government agencies, save money and increase energy efficiency in their buildings. Through a program known as the Continuous Commissioning® process, the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL), a center in the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), has worked to produce more than $100 million in savings in more than 300 buildings throughout Texas, the United States and the world. The Continuous Commissioning process uses an ongoing effort to resolve operating problems, improve comfort, and optimize energy use for existing commercial and institutional buildings and central plant facilities. TEES has trademarked the process, which is being commercialized through the Texas A&M System’s Office of Technology Commercialization.
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“When I was growing up, we tuned our cars up pretty often, and that could make a significant difference in gas mileage,” says David E. Claridge, director of ESL and a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. “The Continuous Commissioning process is a structured process for providing that kind of tune-up to building operation.
“It is a systematic way of looking at buildings and locating problems, and then working with the building operators to correct them.” The origins of Continuous Commissioning saving money at Texas A&M date back to 1995, when the idea was first brought to thenPresident Ray M. Bowen. After being briefed on the process, Bowen’s financial vice president was significantly impressed and scheduled a meeting with Bowen and individuals from ESL. Bowen, who has an engineering background, was duly impressed and told his financial vice president to find the money to make Continuous Commissioning happen on the Texas A&M campus.
Saving homeowners money, too The work of the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL) is not limited just to industry. The center also helps homeowners throughout Texas achieve energy savings. A recent ESL study found that adopting and implementing energy codes for new-home construction saved homeowners more than $1.7 billion statewide. The study covered eight years after the passage of the Texas Emission Reduction Plan (TERP). According to the study, more than 1 million homeowners in Texas who benefited from energy-efficient new homes saw an average reduction of $201 in their utility bills. A major energy-efficiency element of TERP is the establishment of the Texas Building Energy Performance Standards, which define the building energy codes for all new residential and commercial building construction statewide. ESL is responsible for helping to implement energy codes statewide, including reviewing and recommending state adoption of new building energy code editions. ESL also reviews local code amendments and offers technical assistance to local municipalities, cities and councils of governments. ESL is the prime source for energy-code information and training for the entire building community and is responsible for analyzing the energy savings and the resultant emissions reduction from energy efficiency and renewable energy programs under TERP.
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A decision was made to take money from the campus’ utilities budget, giving the process its start, but also putting pressure on then-ESL Director Dan Turner, Claridge and their colleagues to produce results somewhat quickly. “Knowing that the utility budget was a biennial budget, we knew we had to save enough in two years to pay for the work we were doing,” Claridge says.
The total savings in just the Kleberg building were almost enough to recoup the initial startup cost of the meters for the program. Before they could even begin to study the energy efficiency of the buildings on campus, heating, cooling, and electric meters had to be installed, leading to an initial output of nearly $750,000. “A key aspect of this is you need to have measurements of the energy going into the building before you can effectively see what you are accomplishing,” Claridge says. After installing meters in the first 20 buildings, data were analyzed and a decision was made to focus on the Kleberg building, which then was just under 20 years old and was using a great deal of heating and cooling. engineeringmagazine enginee ringmagazine .tam u .e .ed du
The Austin City Hall realized savings of more than $70,000 during the first 12 months Continuous Commissioning efforts were implemented.
The ESL group found that in an effort to fix humidity problems in the building, the air coming into it was being heated to 110 degrees, then immediately being cooled to 55 degrees. The coils used to heat the air were designed to come on only if the outside temperature was near freezing. This parameter would keep the outside air warm enough to prevent freezing in any part of the ventilation system. But in the effort to combat the humidity in Kleberg, the coils were left on continuously. “It was one of those things where you have a very vexing problem and you are trying to figure out how to fix it,” Claridge says. “Somewhere along the way, someone thought of this and those problems seemed to go away.” Simply turning off those coils saved nearly $200,000 per year, according to Claridge. Going through the rest of the building, finding other problems and making modifications, saved another $200,000 per year. The total savings in just the Kleberg building were almost enough to recoup the initial startup cost of the meters for the program. “The savings in that building were significantly more than the total operating cost of many
“When I was growing up, we tuned our cars up pretty often, and that could make a significant difference in gas mileage. The Continuous Commissioning process is a structured process for providing that kind of tune-up to building operation.” similar buildings on campus,” Claridge says. “We immediately saved essentially enough to pay for the metering on the whole campus in two years in just that one building.” The savings were also enough to sway Bowen, who admitted some years later that he was initially skeptical of the concept. “A number of years after the program was started, President Bowen says, ‘When I first heard of this, I thought it had about as much chance of working as room-temperature fusion did,’” Claridge says. The program has expanded on campus and continues today in more than 80 buildings on the flagship campus in conjunction with the university’s Utilities and Energy Management department. 57
Through the use of Continuous Commissioning® process, the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport has realized more than $13 million in cumulative energy savings.
Several other campuses in the A&M System have also implemented the program, including Texas A&M International University in Laredo, where Claridge says they have done the most work, cutting campus consumption by 15–20 percent. The effort has also spread throughout the state to such entities as the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where it produced 10 percent savings in a brand-new building; the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio; Dallas/Forth Worth International Airport; and IBM. Dr. David Claridge, P.E.
TEES Energy Systems Laboratory Mechanical Engineering Laboratory Director Leland Jordan Professor 979.845.1280 dclaridge@tamu.edu
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Also, through licensees, more than 30 military hospitals worldwide and a dozen Veterans Administration hospitals are using the program.
Recently a new project was started with the Texas Facilities Commission in Austin, continuing ESL’s efforts in an area where it is also using the Continuous Commissioning process in Austin Independent School District buildings and in conjunction with Austin Energy’s Building Tune-Up Program. “The Continuous Commissioning process ended up being significantly more successful than our initial estimates,” Claridge says. “You can say we hoped it would be successful, but we certainly had no idea how much it would save. “I wouldn’t have said we are definitely going to be able to save an average of 15 or 20 percent. There is no way I would have said that. People would have laughed us out of the building.” O
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ENERGY SYSTEMS LABORATORY
T
he Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Energy Systems Laboratory was formed in 1985 primarily to conduct energy efficiency research in building systems and industrial facilities. It also brings energy efficient assessments and improvements to scores of public buildings, schools, and private enterprises across Texas through research and deployment of energy-efficient technologies and techniques, including the integration of renewable energy sources in buildings. The Energy Systems Lab has helped Texans save hundreds of millions of dollars by increasing energy efficiency of buildings, including the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the U.S. Army Medical Command at Fort Sam Houston, and at city, county and private sector buildings.
Building cooling and heating optimization work Current and past public and private projects include: • Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport o $13 million in documented savings o Named the 2010 Energy Project of the Year by the Association of Energy Engineers • Texas A&M main campus o More than $75 million in savings since 1995 o Texas A&M’s campus energy use is 44 percent less per square foot than in 1993 • Texas A&M International University Green Campus Initiative o $1.6 million in savings since 2005 o TAMIU’s campus use is 28 percent less per square foot than in 2000 • U.S. Army Medical Command o More than $20 million in savings in 33 hospitals worldwide • Alamo Community Colleges in San Antonio o $7.8 million in savings since 2002 • IBM Global Energy Management o More than $3 million in savings since 2005
“The Continuous Commissioning process ended up beingsignificantly more successful than our initial estimates.”
ESL experts • provide building energy code training statewide to builders and code enforcement officials • perform annual air emissions calculations for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency • conduct, with Texas A&M Engineering students, small industrial energy surveys funded by the U.S. Department of Energy for private industry • test fan, sound and HVAC systems for manufacturers • assist The Texas A&M University System in purchasing aggregated electricity for all system members and institutions 59
SIMULATOR BECOMES REALITY A piece of U.S. space history comes to Texas A&M Now that NASA’s space shuttle program has ended, relics from the program’s 40-year history are scattered across the United States. The Shuttle Mission Simulator, or SMS, will find a new home at Texas A&M University. The simulator has trained 355 astronauts for 135 missions and will be the only large piece of equipment from the NASA space shuttle program that will remain in Texas. The Department of Aerospace Engineering is spearheading the effort to move the fully operational simulator to Texas A&M for researchers, the public and students of all ages to use for many years to come. The simulator is expected to open to the public in summer 2013.
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OPINION
AN EDUCATOR’S PERSPECTIVE
John Valasek Professor Aerospace Engineering
Texas A&M
University will soon have a new attraction for current students and researchers to use and learn from, and for space enthusiasts to visit, when the NASA Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) opens to the public in summer 2013. This opportunity wouldn’t have come about without NASA’s Paul S. Hill ’84, director of Mission Operations at NASA Johnson Space Center. Hill contacted us about this great opportunity to bring this one-of-a-kind experience to Texas A&M so that current and future students could benefit from this, see how engineering is done in the real world, see how NASA prepared astronauts to fly into space, and see a big part of the history of the U.S. space program. NASA built this simulator in the late 1970s, and it operated daily until 2011. Every astronaut who has trained to fly the space shuttle has flown this simulator. This sophisticated tool—the only device of its kind—trained astronauts to use the space shuttle to launch into space and fly back to Earth. We plan to restore the simulator to the way it was when the last mission flew in July 2011. Those astronauts who flew that last mission will be able to come to Texas A&M, sit in the simulator and say, “That’s exactly how I remember it.” It’s going to be a time capsule, frozen in time so that everyone who comes to see it and fly it will get to experience a piece of space history.
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OPINION
And it’s living history. Unlike a typical museum display, where you look at exhibits and read a placard, this is history that you actually get to interact with. You’ll get to sit in it, fly it and run the full simulation exactly how the NASA astronauts did. The simulator will also complement our education and research efforts in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Our Vehicle Systems and Control Laboratory has simulators for a variety of aircraft, from general aviation to large commercial air transports, such as the Boeing 787, to various types of military aircraft, such as the F-35 Lightning II. The SMS is also a flight simulator, but of a space vehicle. So the basics are the same—the dynamics, the atmospheric models, the cockpit, all the interfaces and displays for the pilots—but the SMS is specialized for space travel.
You’ll get to sit in it, fly it and run the full simulation exactly how the NASA astronauts did. Several courses in aerospace engineering and other engineering departments will use the simulator—for example, evaluating cockpit– human factors or studying flight mechanics or guidance, navigation, and control. For some courses, we envision creating laboratory sections in which students will use the simulator as part of their work. The SMS will also be available to faculty and students for research, in addition to companies, organizations or individuals who wish to conduct research under contract. Public school students and teachers will also have ample opportunity to experience the SMS. And this opportunity wouldn’t be happening without the dedicated students of Texas A&M.
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Right now they’re doing inventory and helping with site preparation. Students in aerospace engineering honors classes have been working up lesson plans for K–12 teachers and for aerospace engineering courses and laboratory sections at Texas A&M. Members of the Texas A&M chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space are designing the SMS Experience, an immersive experience for the facility, to include everything from selecting the pictures on the wall to the videos shown in the waiting-area monitors to the music playing over the loudspeaker. We want the shuttle simulator experience to be as good as visitors expect it to be, and better. Approximately 1,000 people each year visit the Vehicle Systems and Control Laboratory on campus to fly the simulators, but I anticipate that visits to the SMS will easily exceed that number. And that’s what we want: to make this facility available to the public to see, interact with and learn from. I’ve already been contacted by people all over the country who want to plan their summer vacations around bringing their families here to fly the simulator. We will have a significant piece of the space program sitting right here at Texas A&M so that space enthusiasts can come visit it and get to see something on the same quality and significance level as anything at the National Air and Space Museum or one of the NASA museums. So lots of people are excited, and I’m excited too because this will be the only large piece of the space shuttle program that will remain in Texas. I’m excited that Texas A&M students, faculty, former students and friends will be able to use and enjoy it, and get to experience just a little bit of what flying into space on the shuttle is like. You won’t be able to do that anywhere else in the world. I’d like to be the first one to fly the SMS once it’s up and running here, but I’ll reserve that honor for the student technicians who have worked so hard on it. I flew it when it was at NASA, so I know the experience everyone will have—and it’s going to be good. Even though I have worked on and flown simulators in industry and academia for my entire career, flying the SMS was still even better than I thought it would be. Everyone needs to experience this—it’s great! O
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OPINION
A CURRENT STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
Lisa Warren ’12 SMS student volunteer coordinator and aerospace engineering major Every good Aggie will boast of Texas A&M’s prowess and grandeur. College Station will soon be a national landmark as home of the only Space Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) in existence. I am excited that we are receiving not only a vestige of space exploration history but also a critical piece of American history. The SMS has been a crucial part of the space shuttle program since the program began in the 1970s. Every astronaut who has undertaken a shuttle mission has trained on this extraordinary machine. The SMS is the only major item from the shuttle program that is staying in Texas after the final mission in July 2011. A team from NASA will assemble the SMS at the Texas A&M University Services Building. The team of student volunteers is aiding reconstruction of the SMS in several ways, including the inventory of parts arriving from Johnson Space Center. Multiple interior walls had to be demolished to install the simulator, and the walls will be rebuilt the full two stories after the simulator’s reconstruction. The student volunteers will continue to assist with every aspect of the up-and-coming SMS program. The next step will be to design and set up the area where the SMS will be housed to ensure that the overall experience is out of this world. When I was a kid, astronauts and the space program fascinated me. I have wanted to know what experiencing spaceflight would be like since the first time I was exposed to the idea of humans going to outer space at Hardin-Simmons University day camp. This interest continued to develop during my sixth-grade field trip to Johnson Space Center. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I might one day fly the SMS, much less be a part of the group maintaining this living piece of history to inspire future space enthusiasts.
I think all college students reach a point in their careers when they ask themselves, “Why am I doing this?” As a senior majoring in aerospace engineering, I have asked myself this very question on many occasions. But experiences such as working with the SMS remind me why I love aerospace engineering, and that’s what gives me the desire to prevail.
Working with the SMS has reignited the spark that is my passion for aerospace. Working with the SMS has reignited the spark that is my passion for aerospace. It will be a living piece of history and act as a beacon to future Aggies. We will always be able to remember the significance of the space shuttle program, and having the SMS will allow anybody to experience it firsthand. O
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OPINION
A FORMER STUDENT’S PERSPECTIVE
Paul Sean Hill ’84 Director, Mission Operations NASA Johnson Space Center The Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) Motion Base Simulator (MBS) is on its way to reactivation in Aggieland by the aerospace engineering department. What a poignant transition for this historic simulator, NASA’s manned space program and Aggies. As the name implies, the MBS is a full-fidelity cockpit and full-motion space shuttle simulator. In fact, it is the single full-motion shuttle simulator used by every one of the 852 people from 15 nations who flew on shuttle missions throughout that program’s 30-year flight history. This machine, driven by the same software that also controlled the shuttles, was used extensively in preparation for all 135 shuttle missions, from 1977 through July 2011, for spacecraft software testing, piloting technique development, and astronaut and mission control training.
Imagine what it means to more generations who will have access to the touch and feel experienced by real, spacefaring shuttle astronauts. A primary role of the MBS was to ensure that astronauts flying a shuttle felt as routine and “normal” as possible while riding into space at the tip of millions of pounds of fire, or flying through a cloud of fire during reentry at the end of a mission. More critically, the MBS was a key platform on which to practice a seemingly infinite combination of shuttle system failures and emergencies during all phases of spaceflight, also ensuring that the astronauts and Mission Control were prepared for anything this dangerous business conjured up.
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As a freshman aerospace engineering student in the fall of 1980, and just before the first launch the following spring, I watched my dad, Larry Hill ’56, a NASA manager at Johnson Space Center, describe the shuttle flight profile in the Rudder Auditorium to a group of students and professors. More than 30 years later, I managed both the training that employed the MBS and Mission Control. In that same capacity a few months after the last shuttle landed, I signed the legal agreements with Texas A&M President Bowen Loftin that delivered the MBS to my university and my aerospace engineering department. In the space left behind the MBS, NASA has already begun developing simulators for next-generation spacecraft. In the summer of 2013, John Valasek and his team in the aerospace engineering department will reactivate this historic simulator in Aggieland. He plans to get much more life out of the MBS, including Aggie and public access to simulated shuttle flight and a range of flight development projects. Valasek also has insisted on keeping all equipment touched by NASA astronauts exactly as it was when astronauts flew their last MBS sortie. Imagine what it means to more generations who will have access to the touch and feel experienced by real, spacefaring shuttle astronauts, and to the engineering students who lead projects with the MBS that still has that historic authenticity. And those experiences are just up Highway 6 from NASA Johnson Space Center at Texas A&M University. Again, what a poignant transition for this historic simulator, NASA’s manned space program and Aggies. O
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By Lesley Kriewald
Nuclear Materials Under Extreme Conditions Designing advanced materials for next-generation nuclear reactors To build safer, longer-lasting nuclear reactors, researchers need advanced materials that can withstand the harsh environment inside a reactor. Lin Shao, an associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, is a materials physicist on the hunt for these advanced materials. Shao’s research focuses on understanding why materials fail, particularly in the harsh environments inside a reactor, such as high temperature, stress, corrosion and neutron damage. The aim of the research is not only reactor safety but also reactor economics and nuclear waste management. Since 2007, Shao’s research group has received $8.3 million in funding, primarily from the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. Shao and his collaborators study a variety of materials, from stainless steel, which was used as cladding material (the hollow tube used to contain nuclear fuels), to ceramics and even concrete.
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“We need to test these materials to get an idea of how long the materials will last,” Shao says, “and we need to understand what the mechanism is behind these failures so we can come up with a strategy to have better material development so the materials can have a longer lifetime.”
Aiding in this study is the country’s largest university radiation facility, Shao’s Ion Beam Laboratory, with five accelerators providing the particles at various energies that are needed to simulate what happens inside a nuclear reactor—in a relatively short time. Unique capabilities
Aiding in this study is the country’s largest university radiation facility, Shao’s Ion Beam Laboratory, with five accelerators providing the particles at various energies that are needed to simulate what happens inside a nuclear reactor—in a relatively short time. “Previously, if someone said, ‘This material is good and can be used as a structural component inside a reactor,’ we can test to see whether that’s true,” Shao says. “We could put this material inside a reactor and irradiate it for a long time—probably five or 10 years— and then evaluate the damage. “But we just can’t afford to wait such a long time,” he continues. “Therefore, we use our accelerator to create those high-energy, strong beams to simulate radiation damage and get a very quick answer. Our machines are very capable. For example, one day of exposure to radiation from an accelerator can represent a few years of the radiation inside a reactor.” Shao says the capabilities of the five accelerators can be combined with those of the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute, which produces very high-energy particles, and the university’s Nuclear Science Center, which can supply gamma and neutron particles.
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“Combine these facilities, and we have unique capability to carry out systematic research,” Shao says. The unique capabilities of Shao’s lab have led to several subcontracts from various national laboratories that lack the kind of radiation testing facilities needed to test material behavior.
Different types of damage
Shao uses the example of stainless steel cladding. An energetic particle of radiation can rupture the atoms that make up the steel tube, causing damage that sets off a chain reaction that can lead to failure. “You have this perfect stainless steel inside, but the neutron will cause damage and that damage will cause trouble,” he says. “That is the fundamental reason that we have so many nasty conditions inside a reactor.” Swelling is one example of the damage that can occur. The atoms of a particular material are arranged in a certain shape. But left inside a reactor for a few years, the shape changes and grows. “If you’re able to see what’s inside, you’ll find it’s like Swiss cheese,” Shao says. “The material begins to have a cavity inside due to this damage. It used to be okay to have 5 percent swelling, but in the next generation of nuclear reactors, even 1 percent swelling will cause a safety issue. So therefore, the whole field is hungry to find what is the best material that can suppress this kind of swelling enough to keep the structural integrity.” Materials inside a nuclear reactor may also experience cracking. That can happen when stainless steel that contains nuclear fuel comes into contact with coolant, usually water at about 400–500 degrees Celsius in current reactors but will be about 1,000 degrees Celsius in next-generation reactors. After a few years, that water will begin to interact with the stainless steel and cause cracking. If this cracking cannot be stopped, then the nuclear fuel is exposed to coolant, contaminating the whole loop and causing accidents.
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Gas atoms that accumulate inside a metal can form bubbles, similar to the bubbles seen around the edge of a pancake while it’s being cooked. Neutrons interacting with the material create these gas atoms. Shao says it’s fair to blame all accelerated materials failures on neutrons, in fact. Neutrons destroy the original material structures through two types of interactions: nuclear reactions that create energetic fission fragments and direct neutron scattering in which the neutron knocks one atom out of its original location. A given atom can be pushed around by either fission fragments or directly by neutrons and get relocated up to hundreds of times. “So no matter how good a material is at the beginning, everything will get messed up at the end,” Shao says. Neutron damage also changes the water chemistry inside the reactor so that the water behaves like an acid. Therefore, corrosion damage is also of concern to nuclear engineers.
We need to test these materials to get an idea of how long the materials will last, and we need to understand what the mechanism is behind these failures so we can develop materials with a longer lifetime. Cracking, swelling, bubble formation and corrosion are just several typical ways that materials inside a reactor can fail. In reality, these failure mechanisms are correlated into each other and the combined effect is far more severe.
Shao directs the largest university radiation facility in the country, with five accelerators to create high-energy particle beams needed to simulate radiation damage.
The complexity of these materials issues has driven the nuclear materials research from large-scale descriptive studies into atomicscale fundamental studies, which requires collaborative researches across the fields of engineering, physics and chemistry. “Thanks to the excellent collaborative research environments at Texas A&M, we are lucky to find many partners having common interests in these areas,” Shao says.
Understanding damage on the atomic level Shao says that in addition to testing, his research group seeks to understand the mechanism behind the behaviors observed. To do that, the researchers have established a strong modeling program to “see” what experiments can’t see. One collaboration with Tahir Cagin, from the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has allowed the researchers to understand how some metals and ceramics react when bombarded with radiation.
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“We are able to catch those atom interactions at a very short time scale, to go beyond the experimental capability there. We combine experiments and modeling to get an understanding of the mechanism behind material failure.” Shao says the need for more safety in nextgeneration reactors drives this push for better material design, and that means studying nanostructured materials at the atomic scale. If you put two different materials together, the boundary (or interface) between these two different kinds of materials has a unique effect of trapping defects caused by radiation damage. These boundaries between materials, if they can be stabilized under neutron damage, behave as trash cans, collecting the garbage, or damage, created by radiation.
“Our key interest is trying to maximize this interface region so the material will have a self-annealing effect: The material will repair the damage itself.” This garbage-collecting property leads Shao to expect that these nanoengineered materials will have a significant impact on material design, with longer lifetime inside a nuclear reactor. This particular area of study has led to several research grants, including Shao’s National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2009. “We want to match modeling and simulations, to actually see individual atoms,” Shao says. “So we use transmission electron microscopy to see what happens at the metal–metal interface when we put two metals together and bombard with particles.”
Dr. Lin Shao
Nuclear Engineering Associate Professor 979.845.4107 lshao@tamu.edu
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Most recently, Shao proposed to bond metals with ceramic glasses to create a new type of interface. The work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy as a collaborative project with the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Benefits of nanostructured materials
An energy particle is like a bullet, bombarding the material and causing damage inside. With bulk material—say, a lump of silicon— that energy bullet after one picosecond causes cascading damage by displacing all the atoms in the matrix. But when the same energy bullet is fired at a small nanowire, such as a fiber tube, the same radiation causes very few defects inside. “That’s the interface effect we are talking about,” Shao says. “Our key interest is trying to maximize this interface region so the material will have a self-annealing effect: The material will repair the damage itself.” One way to increase this boundary, or interface region, is to order the atoms in a polycrystal, a large crystal made up of many smaller crystals. “Our desire here is trying to maximize those boundaries so each material inside will have a domain, a crystal as small as possible so we can maximize those regional interfaces. If we can do that, we can trap more defects there to stop damage from spreading.”
Major focus
A major focus of the research team is cladding material. That hollow tube serves as the first buffer layer between the coolant and the nuclear fuel—a critical function, Shao says. Shao cites the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident in Japan as an example of just how critical cladding material can be. “Everybody talks about that reactor accident. That accident came from the fact that the fuel cladding, that hollow tube, was made of zircaloy, a zirconium-based alloy. That alloy works very well at normal operating temperature, 500 degrees Celsius. But after the tsunami, due to the coolant being shut off, the water became very hot. That hot water interacted with the zirconium and released a huge amount of hydrogen. That’s what caused the explosion there.
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“So you can see that material selection for that cladding material is critical. So that is the trend in this country, trying to replace zirconium.”
“We do whatever we can do to find the best material that best performs under that normal operation temperature, but who knows what will happen if we have an accident? Anything can happen, so we try to say, ‘Are we able to structure this so we find a better material, which is safer even in extreme conditions?’” Shao is investigating using a silicon carbide composite to replace zirconium in cladding material in order to avoid the situation in the Japan reactor. Because silicon carbide is a ceramic, no hydrogen will be released when (or if) the cladding interacts with hot water. And using fiber bundles of silicon carbide rather than bulk silicon carbide helps to strengthen the material. “If you had a material made of just bulk silicon carbide, and you tried to bend it, it would crack,” Shao says. “But silicon carbide fiber material can be bent to minimize cracking. When you push or displace a fiber, it pulls out of the matrix and then can go back into its shape. So you have a way to release the stress. Therefore, we do whatever we can do to find the best material that best performs under that normal operation temperature, but who knows what will happen if we have an accident? Anything can happen, so we try to say, ‘Are we able to structure this so we find a better material, which is safer even in extreme conditions?’ O
Study abroad: China In summer 2012, Shao and 15 Texas A&M nuclear engineering students studied in China for several weeks. Faculty members Jean Ragusa and Cable Kurwitz also accompanied the Texas A&M delegation. Shao says big things are happening in nuclear engineering in China. “In China, the largest nuclear engineering program has more than 1,000 students, much larger than our program, and the nuclear engineering program at Texas A&M is the largest program in the United States,” Shao says. After lectures from both Texas A&M and Chinese university faculty, the Aggie and Chinese students toured several nuclear power plants. “The beautiful thing about this summer school is that our students had the chance to see those nuclear power plants under different stages of construction, which is very valuable. Once a nuclear power plant is constructed, you cannot see inside. You can get some idea of management, see the cooling swimming pool, the waste management, see the control panel, but you won’t be able to see inside. “In China, they have 26 nuclear power plants under construction right now, and in the United States we only have one. So that was quite an exciting opportunity for us.”
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Building Better
oads R Software helps predict pavement damage for better, longer-lasting roads
Take a drive on any Texas highway and you’ll see no shortage of orange traffic signs warning of road construction. In fact, to the state’s irritated drivers, it seems as if half the highways in Texas are constantly under repair. But new software developed by a team led by Texas A&M Engineering researchers takes into account weather and traffic conditions to help builders design better, longer-lasting roads.
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By Lesley Kriewald
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The Asphalt Research Consortium, or ARC, was founded more than 10 years ago to address a fundamental issue—asphalt, says Dallas Little, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering and a distinguished member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. Specifically, the ARC focuses on the bond between asphalt and its various aggregates, as well as asphalt’s susceptibility to damage from aging and moisture.
“Say where you want a road to be— Houston or Fargo, N.D.—what kind of traffic the area has, what kind of asphalt type, and so on. PANDA can account for all these factors in the performance predictions. A major result of the research consortium’s work is PANDA (Pavement Analysis Using Nonlinear Damage Approach), a state-of-theart, three-dimensional computational code that can predict when and where pavement damage will occur. And this prediction can help road planners and builders build better pavement. The congressionally mandated consortium was funded by a transportation bill (now under extension) through the Federal Highway Administration with about $30 million over six years to evaluate asphalt infrastructure performance. “We answer to the U.S. Department of Transportation, state departments of transportation, industry, academics and area leaders—all representing the driving public,” says Little, who is a Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “The end goal is this model that will be able to enhance pavements to extend the lives of our roads and their sustainability.”
Complex material, complex research team
Pavement is complicated, Little says. It’s made of a very fine mineral filler and aggregate (both sand and gravel-sized rock), bound together by the viscous, sticky black liquid called asphalt that comes from crude oil. The complexity of the composite is due to the physical and chemical reactions between components. Asphalt is dynamic, and air voids and moisture in the mixture can harden and stiffen the material over time. To address this complexity, the interdisciplinary consortium brings together experts in materials science and engineering, chemistry, and transportation. Little, with his expertise in materials engineering, leads Texas A&M’s research team. His insight into asphalt material feeds into the PANDA model. Eyad Masad, a professor at Texas A&M University at Qatar, brings computation expertise to the team. Charles Glover, professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, is an expert in asphalt chemistry and is part of the Texas A&M team, along with Robert Lytton, a micromechanics expert in the civil engineering department. And Rashid Abu Al-Rub, a former assistant professor at Texas A&M, lent his invaluable expertise in structural mechanics. And that’s just at Texas A&M. A major ARC partner is the Western Research Institute at the University of Wyoming. Little says WRI has some of the best asphalt chemists in the world because of the institute’s previous life as a U.S. Department of Energy research facility with particular expertise in shale oil. Researchers at the University of Nevada–Reno are studying tire–pavement interaction to work that knowledge into PANDA. Other collaborators include Advanced Asphalt Technologies in Sterling, Va., the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Nebraska– Lincoln and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “ARC is big and diversified ,” Little says. “We have many researchers who are focused on solving one of this country’s major infrastructure problems.”
Realistic model
Current models make simplifying assumptions and gloss over important aspects. Better life-cycle information can make for a more thorough model to help save money and extend road life.
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“We want to be able to predict performance— any type of damage, whether from fatigue cracking, rutting or moisture damage, or a combination of all,” Little says. “But most existing models are based on empirical methods and experimentation.” The PANDA project is different because it integrates fundamental material properties of asphalt and the mineral aggregate components into a mechanistic model. And to do that, researchers must truly understand asphalt: What properties cause what kind of damage? Can that knowledge be put into a model or computational tool to help planners and builders design pavements? And can existing materials be used to build these roads, or will new materials need to be designed? Road builders have to build different road types in different areas on the basis of information specific to those areas, such as climate and traffic conditions, Little says. “These conditions affect how pavement will perform over a certain life cycle,” Little says. “So we have to know if the pavement will sustain those conditions, whether and how it will deteriorate, what precautions should be taken, and what kind of maintenance plan will need to be developed. The basis for all this is a good model founded on fundamental material properties, and it’s all part of PANDA.”
Road builders have to build different road types in different areas on the basis of information specific to those areas, such as climate and traffic conditions. Little says one notable advancement of PANDA is a rather sophisticated approach: applying the dynamics of an actual wheel as it moves over pavement. Researchers at the University of Illinois, ARC’s most recent partner, offer invaluable expertise in this area. Now PANDA can actually model a realistic moving wheel, not just a static load. “Say where you want a road to be—Houston or Fargo, N.D.—what kind of traffic the area has, what kind of asphalt type, and so on,” Little says. “PANDA can account for all these factors in the performance predictions.”
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute Saving lives, time and resources Dallas Little is also a senior research fellow in the Materials and Pavements Division of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI); he was the first researcher named to that position at TTI. At TTI, Little develops new research initiatives with government and private entities. Established in 1950, TTI is recognized as one of the finest transportation research agencies in the nation and helps prepare students for transportation careers. TTI has a breadth and depth of programs, facilities and capabilities unsurpassed by any higher education–affiliated transportation research program in the United States. Agency researchers seek solutions to the problems and challenges facing all modes of transportation. TTI conducts about 600 research projects annually, with more than 200 sponsors at all levels of government and the private sector. In 2011, TTI had research expenditures totaling $50.1 million. Through strategies and products developed through its research program, TTI has saved Texas and the United States billions of dollars. Institute researchers have made significant advancements in transportation safety, mobility, planning, systems, infrastructure, the environment, and other areas vital to an efficient transportation system and good quality of life. TTI research has a proven impact, saving lives, time and resources. At any one time, TTI has research sponsors in about 30 states and has conducted research for sponsors in all 50 states and in 20 countries. In the laboratory and the classroom, through the Dwight Look College of Engineering and other colleges at Texas A&M, TTI researchers help prepare students for transportation careers. TTI’s 10 state and national research centers illustrate the scope of the institute’s research program. Center research emphasis areas range from transportation safety and economics to railway, border mobility, and ports and waterways research. For more information about TTI, visit http://tti.tamu.edu.
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Atomic force microscope image showing the effect of aging on the micro-phases of asphalt.
Microstructural changes
The software model is also important for predicting performance of pavement on a microstructural level. “We can also use PANDA to design the asphalt itself,” Little says. “We can predict how a certain mixture will behave if you change constituents—the type of asphalt binder, the rock source, the air void content, whether the voids are saturated with water, or if modifiers including nanomaterials or polymers are used. PANDA can help predict how much the overall pavement properties will change when the microstructure changes, so it’s a material design tool as well.” For an example of the nanoscale investigations being considered for input into PANDA, graduate students are using an atomic-force microscope to determine what happens when polymers are added to asphalt. Knowing the nano-, meso- and microstructural changes that occur can help pavement engineers assess specific mechanisms and therefore develop better ways to modify material properties at all length scales. Dr. Dallas N. Little, P.E. Civil Engineering Regents Professor and E.B. Snead Chair 979.845.9847 d-little@tamu.edu
“This is a much smaller scale than has ever been considered before in this field,” Little says. “So incorporating this information into our model is a big step. We are not quite there yet, though, but that is our next step.” The model also accounts for asphalt’s complex material behavior.
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Little says that asphalt is almost like a living body: Damaged asphalt can partially “heal” and fix itself when left alone and under certain conditions. This healing property—what drives it and how it can be used to extend the life of pavement—is another aspect that the research team has studied and incorporated into the model.
“PANDA is a virtual experiment that will give the highway community the ability to easily perform ‘what if’ scenarios and decide how best to build a road that will last.” The team is completing software development, validating the software in laboratory and field tests, and working to make the program more user-friendly for wider use. “PANDA is a virtual experiment,” Little says. “PANDA is capable of evaluating how pavement will respond under loading as the pavement ages and is exposed to air and moisture. This tool will give the highway community the ability to easily perform ‘what if’ scenarios and decide how best to build a road that will last.” O engineeringmagazine enginee ringmagazine .tam u .e .ed du
The Engineering Program of The Texas A&M University System Excellence in education, research and training A partnership of state agencies and universities committed to education in engineering and the applied sciences, to research in engineering and technology, and to outreach through training service and technology transfer.
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Dwight Look College of Engineering Facts
RANKINGS The Look College is one of the largest engineering schools in the country, ranking third in undergraduate enrollment and eighth in graduate enrollment by the American Society for Engineering Education in its 2012 survey. The Look College also ranked eighth in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded, 12th in master’s degrees awarded and ninth in doctoral degrees awarded. And our college consistently ranks among the nation’s top public undergraduate and graduate engineering programs, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Top Public Undergraduate Programs
Top Public Graduate Programs
8 Dwight Look College of Engineering
7 Dwight Look College of Engineering
1 Petroleum Engineering
2 Petroleum Engineering
14 Computer Engineering
2 Nuclear Engineering
3 Biological & Agricultural Engineering
14 Electrical Engineering
4 Biological & Agricultural Engineering
3 Nuclear Engineering
17 Chemical Engineering
5 Industrial & Systems Engineering
6 Aerospace Engineering
18 Biomedical Engineering
8 Civil Engineering
6 Industrial & Systems Engineering
8 Mechanical Engineering
8 Civil Engineering 9 Mechanical Engineering
9 Aerospace Engineering 12 Chemical Engineering
Source: U.S. News & World Report America's Best Graduate Schools
Source: U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges
FACULTY Several of our engineering faculty members are National Academy of Engineering members, and many are fellows of their respective professional societies. They are also editors of their respective flagship journals and are recognized nationally and internationally for their contributions.
12
NAE members
174 76
professors
62
NSF CAREER Award winners since 2003
123
364
tenured or tenure-track faculty
associate professors
4
PECASE winners since 2003
67
assistant professors
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STUDENTS
The Dwight Look College of Engineering is the largest college on the Texas A&M campus with more than 11,000 engineering students enrolled in our 12 departments. Texas A&M is ranked 10th nationally in the number of National Merit Scholars, and more than 60 percent of the university’s National Merit Scholars are engineering students. AEROSPACE ENGINEERING | 818
ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY | 926 & INDUSTRIAL DISTRIBUTION
683
899
135 27
BIOLOGICAL & AGRICULTURAL | 418 ENGINEERING
INDUSTRIAL & SYSTEMS | 886 ENGINEERING
334 84
646 240
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING | 521
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING | 1,650
417
1,196
104 454
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING | 871
NUCLEAR ENGINEERING | 444
717
310
154 134
CIVIL ENGINEERING | 1,440 1,033
PETROLEUM ENGINEERING | 1,022
407
2,850
688
Graduate
334
COMPUTER SCIENCE | 1,088 & ENGINEERING
8,329
Undergraduate
770 318
ELECTRICAL & COMPUTER | 1,520 ENGINEERING 987 533
more than
11,000
students
12
departments Fall 2011 Enrollment 77
Faculty
Research
Scholars
More than 2,800 faculty, including Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize, National Medal of Science and Pulitzer Prize winners, and a host of Distinguished Professors.
More than $705 million invested in research, third in the nation in total research expenditures among universities without medical schools.
Offering more than 120 undergraduate and 240 master’s and Ph.D. degrees.
It’s Time for Texas A&M A university’s success is measured by its return on investments from government, corporations and donors. That means making strong contributions to the public good as well as producing top-flight graduates. Cited for “tangible contributions to the public interest” and “excellent value,” Texas A&M delivers superb learning opportunities and the power to turn discovery into deeds. Ten colleges and more than 50,000 students form a diverse and sophisticated community of teachers and scholars united by a clear vision of purpose, potential and commitment. Explore Texas A&M University at tamu. edu and witness real impact.
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News A&M System awarded $285.6 million for national center for innovation The Texas A&M University System has been awarded a contract to develop one of three U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing.
The contract, with a duration of up to 25 years, builds upon investments by the A&M System and the state of Texas in growing new jobs in the burgeoning biopharmaceutical industry.
The $285.6 million contract includes an initial investment of $176.6 million from the U.S. government, with commercial and academic proposal partners sharing costs on the rest.
The A&M System is the prime contractor for a team of world-class academic, commercial and nonprofit institutions that will bolster the nation’s domestic manufacturing and surge capacity. This highly integrated research and development team will use state-of-the-art processes to develop and test new vaccines and therapies for public health emergencies such as an outbreak of pandemic influenza.
The center will use rapid, nimble and flexible approaches to: • develop and manufacture vaccines to protect against pandemic influenza; • provide therapies in the event of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats; • perform advanced development, accelerating vaccines and other biosecurity products through preclinical and clinical development, leading to licensure; and • train the next generation of professionals in areas required to sustain this national capability, including process engineering, pharmaceutical manufacturing, veterinary sceinces, quality, and regulatory affairs.
The A&M System has a history of national service. System members are leaders in national research and education with a demonstrated commitment to applied life sciences research and developing commercial biopharmaceutical and national biosecurity solutions, particularly at Texas A&M University, the A&M System’s flagship institution, in the critical engineering disciplines required for this program.
Two engineering research teams win NSF EFRI grants totaling $4 million Two research teams led by Texas A&M Engineering faculty members have received National Science Foundation (NSF) grants through the Emerging Frontiers of Research and Innovation (EFRI) program. The grants were awarded to the team led by Richard J. Malak Jr., an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Arum Han, associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and total nearly $4 million. Malak’s research team, which also incorporates faculty from aerospace engineering, computer science and engineering, and visualization, aims to discover new techniques for synthesizing complex 3-D structures from programmable, selffolding 2-D elements. The combined design theory and methods will address a class of design problems—structures made from programmable self-folding active material elements—for which no methods presently exist. If successful, the results of this research will constitute a substantial leap forward in engineering technology and knowledge, allowing engineers to design complex systems in fundamentally new ways. Han’s research team will work to develop technologies for next-generation microalgae-based biofuel. Application of microfluidic lab-on-chip devices to photosynthetic microorganisms such as microalgae could rapidly reveal critical information needed for improving the production of transportation-grade hydrocarbons. Their proposed strategy is to transfer the valuable hydrocarbon synthesis pathway of the slow-growing alga Botryococcus braunii to faster-growing algae with commercial potential. B. braunii hydrocarbons are of particular value because they can be readily converted into petroleum-equivalent fuels. Han said the proposed research will have broad scientific impact because the microfluidic platforms will accelerate research and development across the broad area of biofuel and biomolecule production in a range of microbes, as well as training the next generation of microbial bioenergy engineers and scientists.
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Grunlan receives $461,000 NIST grant for research on flameresistant coatings Jaime Grunlan, an associate professor and the Gulf Oil/Thomas A. Dietz Development Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, received a three-year cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that will provide $461,309 in funding. The project will extend Grunlan’s research into improving the antiflammable behavior of foam (used mostly for furniture padding and insulation) and fabric (primarily for clothing). Grunlan’s technology—which has been reported in Science News, Chemical and Engineering News, Nature and Advanced Materials—involves covering every microscopic fiber in a fabric with a thin composite coating of two polymers that exhibit an intumescent effect, producing a protective carbon foam coating when exposed to high temperatures.
Texas A&M receives $4.5 million to study aging of stored used nuclear fuel The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Texas A&M University $4.5 million over the next three years to research the aging of stored used nuclear fuel. The project has been selected for negotiation of award and will be led by Sean McDeavitt, associate professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Funding for the project is through the Integrated Research Projects program under the Nuclear Energy University Program, which supports large, multiyear projects led by teams of American universities working to develop cross-cutting breakthroughs in nuclear energy technologies. McDeavitt will lead a team of 18 principal investigators and their respective research groups at six universities and two national laboratories.
Alvarado receives $387,000 DOD grant Jorge Alvarado, associate professor in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution, received a project from the Department of Defense (DOD) to develop and deploy a new generation of heat transfer fluids (HTF) in key military installations. Alvarado is responsible for running on-site demonstrations that will include Web-based monitoring of the thermal performance of the new HTF in designated military facilities. The two-year project, which will receive $952,000 in DOD funding, includes $387,716 for Texas A&M.
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Aggies win national design and manufacturing competition Keeping up their winning tradition, two teams of Texas A&M students won first- and second-place awards at the National Design and Manufacturing Competition in San Antonio. Aggies won third place in 2010, and first and third place in the 2011 contest, which is co-organized by the American Society for Engineering Education and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. The first-place team was the Electromagnetic Tracer Team of Todd Laird and Juan Rodriguez (manufacturing and mechanical engineering technology) and May-Thu Nguyen Hung (nutrition science). The team received a plaque and $1,000. The second-place team was the Maroon Team of Michael Streeter (industrial engineering) and Chris McDonald (mechanical engineering). The team received a plaque and $500. The contest challenged teams to design and manufacture a new medical device to detect possible harmful loops in the human body during endoscopic examination.
Three petroleum engineering students win in SPE regional paper contest Three Texas A&M petroleum engineering students placed in the Society of Petroleum Engineering (SPE) Gulf Coast Region Student Paper Contest at Louisiana State University. Manuel Cossio placed first in the Master of Science division and will represent Texas A&M at the International Student Paper Contest at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exposition this fall. Leo Lasecki placed second in the Bachelor of Science division and Morteza Khodabakhshi placed third in the Ph.D. division. Texas A&M, LSU and the University of Texas at Austin tied in the number of overall winners, with each university receiving one first place, one second place and one third place.
Aerospace engineering students participate in India exchange program Students from the Department of Aerospace Engineering participated in an exchange program with students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur this summer. This is the second year that Texas A&M and IIT Kanpur have facilitated the exchange program. Three students from IIT Kanpur studied at Texas A&M for nine weeks, working with aerospace engineering professors and experiencing Texas culture. The students worked in shape memory alloys, durability of aerospace materials and onboard satellite computers. This was the first trip to the United States for the exchange students. While here, they also visited the River Walk and Alamo in San Antonio, as well as Houston and NASA Johnson Space Center. Conversely, four students from the Department of Aerospace Engineering traveled to IIT Kanpur for 10 weeks. The Texas A&M students studied structures, dynamics and hypersonics under the guidance of renowned aerospace engineering faculty at IIT Kanpur. This was the first trip to India for most of the students. On the weekends, they traveled to different parts of India, including Delhi, Agra (the city of Taj Mahal), Lucknow and several tourist attractions in the state of Rajasthan.
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News New publication details future of process safety for academia, industry Substantial risk remains for serious industrial incidents that could cost property and lives, but effectively integrating science and engineering principles into academia and industry can help mitigate and even prevent these incidents, according to a publication released by the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center at Texas A&M. The publication, Process Safety Research Agenda for the 21st Century, is the product of a 2011 conference that was sponsored by the center and attracted a host of international authorities in the field of process safety to help develop a blueprint for the study and integration of process safety in academia and industry. With the goal of providing a deeper examination into the root causes of industrial incidents, the group set out to address the role of science and engineering in preventing these events, said M. Sam Mannan, director of the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center and the Mike O’Connor Chair I in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. “This publication is the product of a unique gathering and the subsequent work of some of the top authorities in the world who are studying various aspects of process safety,” Mannan said. “It provides a roadmap that outlines the process safety research and needs that will be critical in the coming years.”
Texas A&M research team receives NSF grant for searchand-rescue UAVs Researchers and responders from The Texas A&M University System have received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a visual “common ground” between operators and responders who use micro and small, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue. Following principles in how people know what other people are talking about in conversations, visual common ground will allow responders to easily express, using an iPad or other tablet, where they want the UAV to fly and what angle to examine collapsed structures. The responders would also be able to review imagery and video while the UAV continues its mission rather than waiting for the UAV to land. Response professionals from the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) Disaster Preparedness and Response Division will fly weekly at Disaster City with researchers from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Center for RobotAssisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR), speeding the development and refinement of the natural user interface. The grant is the first direct partnering of emergency responders with university professors and researchers for UAV research. TEEX’s Bob McKee, agency chief for Texas Task Force 1, serves as a principal investigator with Robin Murphy, Texas A&M professor and CRASAR director. The partnership leverages the capabilities of top academic researchers and the preparedness and response expertise of TEEX, all existing within the A&M System. 82
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News Engineering technology professor–student duo win Motorola Golden-i competition Junior Akeem Whitehead and Ben Zoghi (pictured) from the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution won the Golden-i competition at the New York Institute of Technology. Motorola Solutions Inc. sponsored the contest. The Golden-i Developer Competition and Partner Conference challenged participants to create innovative, broad-reaching applications for the Golden-i headset computer, a revolutionary, hands-free mobile computing device coming to market late next year. Whitehead and Zoghi’s winning entry, “Multi-Purpose Sensory Robotics Application,” enables a Golden-i user to have complete remote control via voice commands of a robot equipped with various outward-facing sensors to identify various environmental dangers. The Texas A&M application impressed judges with its breadth of imagination and full implementation of Golden-i capabilities. It was the judges’ unanimous pick for top honors and earned the duo a $10,000 cash award.
New technology could improve treatment for diabetes, other disorders For people suffering from diabetes and other hormonal disorders, staying healthy means staying vigilant; effective treatment requires periodic and precise doses of drugs throughout the day. Now, managing these disorders could become easier thanks to drug-delivery technology being developed by Zhengdong Cheng, associate professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering. Cheng’s work explores a new method for manufacturing the tiny particles that once inside the bloodstream deliver drug treatments to targeted areas of the body. Unlike previous models, Cheng’s drug-delivery particles could potentially administer periodic doses of the drug they contain throughout the day—something that has historically proven difficult for drug-delivery technology but if achieved could eliminate the need for a patient to self-administer multiple times. Although there is still work to be done before Cheng’s mechanism becomes a viable drug-delivery vehicle, preliminary results are promising, he says, noting that the particles have demonstrated the ability to deliver a payload with a system. Cheng says he plans to continue researching the model to further explore methods of controlling the oscillating effects in different environments as well as with different payloads.
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News Civil engineering professor Myounggyu Won receives Best receives two-year, $400,000 DOE Student Paper Award award for wind energy research Moo-Hyun Kim, professor in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, received a twoyear, $400,000 research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) U.S. Offshore Wind Technology Development Program. Kim will develop a dynamic mooring-anchor analysis program for a floating offshore wind turbine. The award was one of 41 offshore wind power R&D projects that received funding totaling $43 million as part of a coordinated federal strategy to put the nation’s wind resources to work and support innovation and jobs throughout the U.S. The projects represent investments in more than 160 universities, labs and businesses in 20 states, which will bring offshore wind to market in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
Myounggyu Won, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, received the Best Student Paper Award at the 9th IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing, held in Melbourne, Australia. Won had two papers accepted: “Energy-Efficient and Robust Multicast Routing for Large-Scale Sensor Networks,” which received the Best Student Paper Award, and “Destination-Based Cut Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks.” In his winning paper, Won presents an energy-efficient and robust geographic multicast routing protocol for large-scale wireless sensor network deployments in realistic environments (e.g., characterized by obstructions, such as holes). His multicast protocol discovers near-optimal multicast routing paths given the restriction of possible complex topologies such as network holes. This protocol also ensures reliable and fast packet-loss recovery through its efficient topology generation.
Aerospace engineering Ph.D. student wins Immersive Visualization Competition Aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate Shriram Jagannathan won first place in the university’s Immersive Visualization Center’s sixth annual competition. Students from a range of disciplines presented work ranging from virtual reality games to turbulent flows. Students created a visualization by using data of their choosing and were judged on visual appeal, scientific accuracy or artistic merit (as applicable), and verbal presentation. Jagannathan’s entry, “Visualization of Coherent Structures in Incompressible and Compressible Turbulent Flows,” focused on stereoscopic visualization of shocklets (highly compressed regions), vortices and high–Mach number regions in a compressible turbulent flow. The visualization yielded important physical insight. They showed, for example, that shocklets move much faster than the mean fluid motion and that regions of high Mach number tend to be more intermittent at high Reynolds number.
Mechanical engineering graduate student wins research competition at international conference Mechanical engineering graduate student Sukbae Joo won the gold medal at the annual meeting of the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers in St. Louis. The conference is an international meeting of the society, and students from around the world participated in the research poster competition. In his poster, Joo discussed the mechanisms of materials removal during a process used to fabricate integrated circuits. His work not only helps the semiconductor industry increase yield of chip fabrication but also contributes to fundamental understanding in the roles of metastable surfaces in manufacturing.
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News Texas A&M SWE chapter honored at annual conference
The Texas A&M chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) was recognized with three awards at the society’s annual conference in Chicago. The chapter received the 2011 Outstanding Collegiate Section Gold, 2011 Outreach Event Series Award and 2011 Membership Recruitment Award. A group of 15 Aggies represented the chapter at the conference, during which members participated in informational seminars, attended a large career fair and got a taste of Chicago. With an active membership of more than 200 women and men, the Texas A&M section of SWE strives to serve the student body, the community and the Dwight Look College of Engineering.
Petroleum engineering master’s students win SPE Star Fellowships Brian Downey, a distance-learning master’s student in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering, received the 2012–2013 SPE Star Academic Fellowship for the Eastern North American Region. Downey is a member of SPE’s New York and New England Petroleum Section, and said he has been lucky enough to participate in the eMentor program over the past two years with two great mentors. He lives in New York and hopes to become more involved in an SPE Young Professionals chapter, once it is more fully established in his area. Downey is currently an equity research associate for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. LLC, a Wall Street sell-side research firm. He said he hopes to make it into industry in a strategy, planning and/or financial role. A second master’s student, Andrea Hersey, also received an SPE Star Academic Fellowship for the Gulf Coast Region. Hersey chairs the Gulf Coast Section’s Young Professionals (YP) Committee. As chair, she led her group to win the Best YP Section Award last year, and after recruiting eight new SPE members, she won the Gulf Coast Region’s membership-recruiting contest. She also serves on the board of directors for the Gulf Coast Section.
Project aims to remove space debris Low Earth Orbit is overcluttered with rogue objects and collision shrapnel that are a constant threat to spacecraft. Experts say that a traditional satellite mission to go capture each object is not efficient enough to make an appreciable difference because of the high cost of orbit transfers. Daniele Mortari, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, and his Ph.D. student Jonathan Missel are developing a new and creative mission structure that reinvents the way the problem is approached. The proposed mission, “TAMU Sweeper,” and the novel satellite design, “SlingSat,” capture and then eject each object through collisions that strongly reduce (or even eliminate) the need to burn fuel for rendezvous, and ejecting the debris mass keeps the craft light. In addition, the momentum exchanged in the capture and ejection of each object can be intelligently planned to act as free impulses for the satellite to transfer to the next object, in place of fuel. The free impulses from capture and ejection are both considered in trajectory optimization to maximize their effectiveness. Sling-Sat also exploits existing momentum to save fuel. Debris is captured at the ends of a spinning satellite. Adjustable arms control the angular rate to achieve a desired tangential ejection speed. Timing the release exacts the ejection angle. Through this process, debris can be redirected to burn up in the atmosphere or by lowering the perigee. The consequent drag increase will then reduce the debris lifetime.
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Best Buy commercial features graduate student Jon Moeller, ZeroTouch Jon Moeller, a graduate student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and the ZeroTouch device he has helped develop, were featured in a nationally aired commercial for Best Buy. Over the past year, ZeroTouch has garnered much attention for its innovative nature and relatively low cost. Touch-sensitive frames have enabled interactive surfaces for years, but the size and responsiveness tend to be limited. ZeroTouch, developed with support from the National Science Foundation, enables precise sensing within a specific plane of interaction.
Computer science Ph.D. student awarded DOD scholarship for 2012–2013 Danielle Cummings, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, accepted a scholarship from the U.S. Department of Defense Information Assurance Scholarship Program for 2012–2013. She is the only awardee from Texas A&M. Cummings has two bachelor’s degrees from The Ohio State University, one in computer science and one in multimedia design. From the University of Houston she has an M.S. in software engineering. Her research interests are in mobile computing, data visualization and augmented reality. She is a research member of the Sketch Recognition Lab, directed by Associate Professor Tracy Hammond. Cummings is recognized for her work on GeoTrooper, which won best-poster awards in 2011. She received the People’s Choice Award at the Tapia Conference for Diversity in Computing in April 2011 and was elected to the board of advisors of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She received a National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute fellowship for 2012 and will be conducting research in biosensor data visualization via augmented reality this summer at Christchurch, New Zealand.
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Civil engineering undergraduate wins at NSF regional conference Tam Duong, an undergraduate in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering, received the Best Poster Presentation Award at the National Science Foundation NEXT-GEN C3 2012 Science and Engineering Regional Conference in Baton Rouge, La. Duong is a member of the Stochastic Geomechanics Laboratory, directed by Assistant Professor Zenon Medina-Cetina. Duong’s current research involves characterizing the microparameters of particle media.
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News Electrical engineering Ph.D. student wins best student paper award from GENSIPS 2011 Sriram Sridharan, a graduate student in the Genomic Signal Processing Laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, won the best student paper award from the IEEE International Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics (GENSIPS 2011). In his paper, Sridharan (along with his coauthors Ritwik Layek, adviser Aniruddha Datta and Jijayanagaram Venkatraj) used available knowledge of oxidative stressresponse pathways to develop a Boolean network model whose simulated behavior is consistent with that of earlier experimental observations from the literature.
Petroleum engineering student wins second place in AADE poster presentation Arash Shadravan, a master’s degree student in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering, won second place in the 2012 American Association of Drilling Engineers (AADE) student poster presentations. The contest was held during the AADE Fluids Technical Conference and Exhibition in April in Houston.
Aerospace engineering student awarded NASA aeronautics scholarship Joshua Harris, an undergraduate student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, received a NASA Aeronautics Scholarship Undergraduate Award under the NASA Aeronautics Scholarship Program. From more than 200 applicants, approximately 20 received awards. The scholarship includes tuition funds for educational and related costs and an optional paid 10-week summer internship. NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate manages the NASA Aeronautics Scholarship. The American Society for Engineering Education works with NASA to administer the program.
SpaceX team includes Aggies A group of Aggies work at one of the leading private space companies in the world, Space Exploration Technologies, also known as SpaceX. The company builds, tests and launches rockets and capsules to further scientific research in space and space exploration. A SpaceX ship recently docked with the International Space Station to make history as the first nongovernment company to provide supplies to the astronauts living on the station. Pictured from left: Dennis Underwood ’07, J.T. Buice ’04, Sarah Canterbury ’10, Brynne-Michelle Hixson ’07 and David Yarbrough ’84. Not pictured are Andy Soukup ’05, Devon Dreyer ’05, Lauren Dreyer ’07 and Dave Taylor ’12.
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News Electrical engineering undergraduate receives inaugural IEEE PES scholarship Stephen McConnell, a senior in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received the inaugural Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Power and Energy Society (PES) Scholarship Plus Initiative Award. McConnell was among the first 93 students to receive the award. Recipients were selected from 51 U.S. universities for the 2011–2012 academic year. Industry and academic representatives selected these students on the basis of academic preparation, extracurricular activities and leadership, interest in engineering in general, and power and energy engineering in particular, as well as overall assessment of their potential for a successful power and energy engineering career.
Electrical engineering graduate student wins award at SRC Techcon Conference Ramy Ahmed, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, won a Best Paper/ Presentation award at the 2011 Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) Techcon Conference. Ahmed and adviser Sebastian Hoyos won for their paper, “A 384-MHz Continuous-Time Delta-Sigma Modulator Using a Hybrid Feedback DAC Based on Spectral Shaping of Jitter Induced Errors,” in the analog–mixed-signal–RF circuit design session. Ahmed’s award is among a select group of SRC-funded projects. They were also invited to submit a full journal article for an IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I special issue.
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Petroleum engineering Ph.D. student wins SPE service award
Three computer science graduate students win Google scholarship
Fady Chaban, a Ph.D. student in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering, received the 2011–2012 Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) Gulf Coast Section Service Award. Regional and section awards recognize SPE members who contribute outstanding service and leadership in their technical disciplines. His award citation read, “In recognition of outstanding section leadership, exceptional accomplishment, dedication, service and volunteerism to the Gulf Coast Section Reservoir Study Group.” Chaban is chair of the SPE Gulf Coast Section’s Reservoir Study Group. The group’s mission is to serve as a forum for petroleum engineers and geoscientists to network and disseminate the knowledge and technology needed to achieve the many objectives of reservoir management, including understanding risk, increasing production and reserves, and maximizing recovery.
Jessica Gonzales, Danielle Cummings and Chinwe Ekenna in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering each were awarded a Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) Google Women of Color Scholarship to attend the 2011 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. The scholarship is highly competitive, and the three were among a few women chosen from more than 1,100 applicants. The Google-sponsored scholarship pays part of the registration fee, hotel, meals and travel to the conference in Portland, Ore. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conferences are designed to help advance the careers and research of women in computing. Leaders in industry, academia and government give informative presentations, while special sessions focus on the role of women in today’s technology fields, including computer science, information technology, research and engineering.
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News Biomedical engineering students receive Outstanding Poster Awards
Biomedical engineering wins SPIE scholarship in optics and photonics Esteban Carbajal, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, received a 2012 Scholarship in Optics and Photonics from SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for his potential contributions to optics, photonics or a related field. Carbajal is a secondyear Ph.D. student and a research assistant, working under Assistant Professor Brian E. Applegate. Carbajal’s research focus is on the design of optical coherence tomography imaging systems for robust biomedical applications. His current project, in collaboration with Rice University and Stanford Medical School, aims to view inner-ear structures for early detection of hearing loss in U.S. soldiers.
Biomedical Engineering graduate student Tony Akl (pictured on the right) and recent Ph.D. graduate Ryan Shelton won Outstanding Poster Awards at the 2012 Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Medicine and Biology in July. Akl and Shelton were among 168 invited to participate in this year’s conference. Akl won the Outstanding Poster Award for his presentation, “Monitoring Liver Transplants using Near-Infrared Photoplethysmography.” Akl’s 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 won the Outstanding Poster Award for his presentation, “Advances in Molecular Contrast for Photoacoustic Microscopy and Optical Coherence Tomography.” Shelton, who graduated in August, will continue his postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While at Texas A&M, Shelton’s primary research area was high-resolution molecular imaging using photoacoustic microscopy, and his research included various applications of optical coherence tomography.
Texas A&M Eta Kappa Nu chapter named outstanding chapter Texas A&M’s Gamma Mu chapter of Eta Kappa Nu (HKN) received the Outstanding Chapter Award for 2010–2011. HKN is the electrical and computer engineering honor society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Chapters are judged on their activities of service to others, and chapters with exemplary programs can win the award. The Gamma Mu chapter of HKN at Texas A&M has more than 60 members, including electrical and computer engineering undergraduates, graduates and professionals. In its annual report submitted to the awards committee the chapter stressed three key goals: to improve the quality of membership in the organization, to increase the chapter’s service to the electrical and computer engineering department, and to increase the number of inducted members each semester.
Aggie Maroon team places second in Battle of the Brains contest Texas A&M’s Maroon Team took second place in the 2011 Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest South Central USA Regional Programming Contest, aka the Battle of the Brains, at Baylor University. The competition consisted of 60 teams from universities in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Team Maroon members were Kyle Willmon, a senior computer science major; Ryan Schmidt, a junior computer science major; and Robert Schumacher, a senior computer engineering major.
Materials graduate student wins MRS Silver Award Diego Gomez-Gualdron, a Ph.D. candidate in the Materials Science and Engineering program, won a Silver Award from the Materials Research Society. Twenty-three graduate students were recognized for their academic achievements and materials research, which exhibit a high level of excellence and distinction. Of the 105 applications processed, the 23 finalists were chosen on the merits of exceptional abilities and promise for significant future achievement in materials research. Gold and Silver Awards were decided on the basis of oral or poster presentations. Gomez-Gualdron is a graduate student under Professor Perla Balbuena in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering.
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Computer science graduate students awarded NSF EAPSI Fellowships Danielle Cummings and Paul Taele, graduate students in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, received National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) fellowships. Cummings will conduct research in biosensor data visualization via augmented reality in Christchurch, New Zealand, with Dr. Mark Billinghurst in the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Canterbury. Taele will carry out research in beyond-surface sketch recognition and interaction techniques at Taipei, Taiwan, with Dr. Mike Chen in the Mobile, Social and HCI Research Lab at National Taiwan University. Both students are Ph.D. candidates in computer science and are research members of the Sketch Recognition Lab directed by Associate Professor Tracy Hammond.
Biological and agricultural engineering graduate student wins ASABE competition Laura Hill, a food engineering Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, was awarded first place in the Ph.D. category of the 2012 Boyd-Scott Graduate Research Award competition held at the 2012 Annual American Society of Biological and Agricultural Engineers (ASABE) meeting in Dallas. The three students who scored the highest in the written competition were invited to participate in the oral competition that defined placements during the meeting July 30. Hill won the award for her entry, “Development of Beta-cyclodextrin Inclusion Complexes Containing Essential Oils (trans-Cinnamaldehyde, Eugenol, Cinnamon Bark and Clove Bud Extracts) Singly and in Combination for Antimicrobial Delivery Applications.”
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Aggies win regional cyber defense contest for fourth year A Texas A&M team won the 2012 Southwest Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (SWCCDC) for the fourth year in a row. The Texas A&M team members included Nik Johnson (computer engineering), Ross Dixon (computer science), Ryan Schmidt (computer science), Taahir Ahmed (computer engineering), Robert Schumacher (computer engineering), Mark Browning (computer engineering) and Katelyn Seloff (psychology). The SWCCDC asked student teams to assume administrative and protective duties for a small business’s computer network consisting of multiple servers and Internet services such as a Web server, mail server, and e-commerce site.
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News Computer engineering graduate student awarded Weinberg Fellowship Charles W. Lively III, a computer engineering Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, will join the National Center for Computational Sciences division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Lively received the prestigious 2012 Alvin M. Weinberg Fellowship for his dissertation work, “E-AMOM: An Energy-Aware Modeling and Optimization Methodology for Scientific Applications on Multicore Systems.” The fellowship runs up to two years, with possible renewal for a third, and usually requires a doctorate, although candidates nearing completion of a Ph.D. are also eligible.
NSF awards graduate Fellowships to Texas A&M students 13 Fellowship recipients Oscar Carrasco-Zevallos.................................. Biomedical Engineering Michael Alan Cox............................................................................ Materials Zachary A. Crannell............................................................Bioengineering Carolyn Estrada..................................................... Aerospace Engineering Jillian Greczek............................... Computer Science and Engineering Jennifer Lindsey Holm...................................... Biomedical Engineering Jenna Kromann..........................................Civil Engineering/hydrology Cory Allan Olsovsky.......................................... Biomedical Engineering Stacy Lee Prukop....................................................... Polymer Engineering Giuliana Eva Salazar-Noratto......................... Biomedical Engineering Zachary Nolan Sunberg..................................... Aeorspace Engineering Jessica Kimberly Weaver...................................... Electrical Engineering Kristina Diane Yancey............................................. Nuclear Engineering 7 Honorable Mentions Christine Michelle Bergerson.................... Biomedical Engineering Ralph W. Crosby.........................................Computer Engineering Candice Marie Haase................................ Biomedical Engineering Ryan Patrick Kelly.......................................... Nuclear Engineering Dariya Konstantinovna Reid........................Chemical Engineering Ana Ysabel Rioja........................................ Biomedical Engineering William James Sames..................................... Nuclear Engineering
Aerospace engineering students win in AIAA regional contest Two students from the Department of Aerospace Engineering won first place in their divisions in the 2012 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Region IV Student Paper Conference in April at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. James Henrickson won first place in the graduate division for his paper, “Characterization of Shape Memory Alloys Using Artificial Neural Networks.” He will compete in the national championship at the 2013 AIAA Aerospace Sciences Conference in Grapevine, Texas. His coauthor and research adviser is Professor John Valasek. Austin Probe won first place in the public outreach division for his presentation, “Texas A&M Sigma Gamma Tau Community Outreach.” Probe is the president of Sigma Gamma Tau (SGT), the aerospace engineering national honor society, and his presentation highlighted SGT outreach activities.
Aerospace engineering senior wins Sigma Gamma Tau region award Sigma Gamma Tau, the aerospace engineering national honor society, selected Steven Anderson to receive the 2012 Southwest Region Award. This prestigious award honors Anderson as one of the top seven outstanding aerospace engineering seniors in the United States, on the basis of his academic, service and extracurricular accomplishments. The award consists of a $250 honorarium and a plaque. A brass nameplate will be installed on the department’s Sigma Gamma Tau Award perpetual plaque.
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Leadership Dwight Look College of Engineering Administration ADMINISTRATION
Department Heads
Dr. M. Katherine Banks
Dr. Rodney Bowersox (Interim)
Vice Chancellor and Dean of Engineering Director, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Harold J. Haynes Dean’s Chair Professor
Dr. N.K. Anand, P.E.
Dr. Stephen W. Searcy, P.E.
Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering
Executive Associate Dean James M. ’12 and Ada Sutton Forsyth Professor in Mechanical Engineering
Dr. Gerard L. Coté
Dr. Dimitris Lagoudas, P.E.
Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering
Senior Associate Dean for research John and bea slattery chair in AEROSPACE Engineering
Dr. Robin Autenrieth, P.E.
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Dr. Nazmul Karim
Dr. John M. Niedzwecki, P.E.
Zachry Department of Civil Engineering
Senior Associate Dean for academic affairs A.P. and Florence Wiley Professor III in Civil Engineering
Dr. Duncan M. “Hank” Walker
Dr. Scott Miller
Dr. Chanan Singh, P.E. (Interim)
Dr. Costas N. Georghiades, P.E.
Dr. Walter W. Buchanan, P.E.
Associate Dean for graduate programs
Department of Computer Science and Engineering Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Associate Dean for research Delbert A. Whitaker Chair in electrical engineering
Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
Carol Huff
Dr. César Malavé, P.E.
Tiffiny Britton
Dr. Andreas Polycarpou
Marilyn Martell
Dr. Yassin A. Hassan (Interim)
Magda Lagoudas
Dr. Dan Hill, P.E. (Interim)
Assistant VICE CHANCELLOR for Finance Assistant Vice Chancellor For External Affairs Assistant Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Director, Engineering Student Services and Academic Programs
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Department of Aerospace Engineering
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering Department of Nuclear Engineering Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering
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Leadership Texas A&M Engineering Advisory Council Mark Albers ’79
Dr. Joe Fowler ’68
Debra Anglin ’77
J.L. Frank ’58
Senior Vice President Exxon Mobil Corp. 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 ConocoPhillips, Retired
Dr. W.M. (Mike) Barnes ’64
Rockwell International, Retired
Jimmie Bratton ’63
Applied Research Associates, Retired
Clay Bright ’78 Owner/Partner Bright and Co.
Craig Brown ’75
President and CEO Bray International Inc.
Tom Cogan ’77
President Stress Engineering Services Marathon Oil, Retired
Greg Garland ’80
Senior Vice President E&P Americas, ConocoPhillips
Mike Greene
Vice Chairman Energy Future Holdings
William Hanna ’58
Koch Industries, Retired
H. Darryl Heath ’84 Partner Accenture
J.R. Jones ’69
CEO Jones and Carter Inc.
Janeen Judah ’81
General Manager-Houston Gas Assets Chevron Africa and Latin America E&P South Africa Business Unit
Tim Leach ’82
Chairman, CEO and President Concho Resources Inc.
Jeffrey Miller ’88
Christopher Seams ’84
Erle Nye ’59
Dennis Segers ’75
T. Michael O’Connor
President O’Connor Ventures Inc.
Charles Shaver ’80 Operating Partner Golden Gate Capital
Robert Pence ’72
Brent Smolik ’83
Michael Plank ’83
Van Taylor ’71
Senior Vice President, Global Business Development and Marketing Halliburton Chairman Emeritus TXU Corp.
President and CEO Freese & Nichols Inc. Chairman and CEO The Plank Companies Inc.
Mark Potter ’86
Senior Vice President and General Manager Industry Standard Servers and Software Hewlett-Packard Co.
Mark Puckett ’73
Executive Vice President Sales, Marketing and Operations Cypress Semiconductor CEO Tabula Inc.
President and CEO EP Energy SBC Communications, Retired
Don Underwood ’81
General Manager, FMC Technologies Inc.
Don Vardeman ’75
Vice President, Worldwide Facilities Anadarko Petroleum Corp.
Chevron Energy Technology, Retired
Dr. Ronnie Ward ’73
David Reed ’83
Delbert Whitaker ’65
The Honorable Debbie Riddle
James Wiley Sr. ’46
Texas Instruments, Retired Texas State Representative
Consultant
Texas Instruments, Retired Partner Wiley Brothers Investment Builders
Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Retired
Ken LeSuer ’57
Ralph Cox ’53
Tommie Lohman ’59
Chairman Telco Investment Corp.
Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Science and Technology Sandia National Laboratories
Tim Dehne
Kathleen Lucas ’81
John Schiller Jr. ’81
Shariq Yosufzai ’74
Jeff Drees
Lisa Mahlmann ’84
Kevin Schultz ’91
John Zachry ’84
A. Dwain Mayfield ’59
John A. (Jack) Scott ’73
President RABAR Enterprises Vice President, Global Marketing Luminex Corp. US Country President Schneider Electric
Mark Fischer ’72
President and Owner Chaparral Energy Inc.
Thomas Fisher ’66 President M2P Financing
Peter Forster ’63
Chairman and CEO Clark Construction Group LLC
Halliburton, Retired
Vice President, Assurance BP America Inc. Vice President and Deputy, Global Sustainment Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. President ADM Global Resources
Arthur McFerrin Jr. ’65
Dr. J. Stephen Rottler ’80
Chairman and CEO Energy XXI Vice President, Engineering, Data Acquisition and Distributed I/O National Instruments
Walter Williams ’49
Director Cheniere Energy Inc. Vice President Chevron
Chairman and CEO, Zachry Holdings Inc.
President Applied Systems and Technology Transfer
President KMCO Inc.
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Faculty Leadership
364
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 “Terry” Alfriend
Dara Childs, P.E.
Je-Chin Han, P.E.
Akhil Datta-Gupta, P.E.
Akhil Datta-Gupta, P.E.
John L. Junkins, P.E.
Christine A. Ehlig-Economides
Kenneth R. Hall, P.E.
K.R. Rajagopal
Aerospace Engineering
Petroleum Engineering
Petroleum Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Petroleum Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Aerospace Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Gilbert Froment
John L. Junkins, P.E.
J.N. Reddy, P.E.
Stephen A. Holditch, P.E.
Dallas Little, P.E.
B. Don Russell, P.E.
John L. Junkins, P.E.
M. Sam Mannan, P.E.
William Saric, P.E.
P.R. Kumar
John M. Niedzwecki, P.E.
Bjarne Stroustrup
Warren F. “Pete” Miller
K.R. Rajagopal
Kenneth F. Reinschmidt
J.N. Reddy, P.E.
B. Don Russell, P.E.
Jose M. Roesset
William Saric, P.E.
B. Don Russell, P.E.
Bjarne Stroustrup
Chanan Singh, P.E.
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
Aerospace Engineering
Civil Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Civil 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, P.E.
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Jennifer Welch
Computer Science and Engineering
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Faculty Honors & Awards
Datta-Gupta elected to National Academy of Engineering Akhil Datta-Gupta, Regents Professor and L.F. Peterson ’36 Chair in the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum Engineering, has been elected a member of the The academy honors those who have made important and significant contributions to engineering theory and practice as well as unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new fields of technology.
and two SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Certificates for the best peer-approved paper in 2000 and 2006. He has been named an SPE distinguished member, distinguished lecturer, distinguished author and outstanding technical editor.
Datta-Gupta was recognized “for developing the theory and practice of streamline simulation for fluid flow in heterogeneous reservoirs.”
In addition to his SPE awards, he received the AIME Rossitter W. Raymond award, received the Tenneco Meritorious Teaching Award from the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M, and served as a member of the Polar Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences (2001–2004). He is also the recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy Award for Outstanding Contributions to Basic Research in Geosciences in 2008. He is a coauthor of the SPE textbook Streamline Simulation: Theory and Practice.
3-D streamline simulation is widely considered as one of the major developments in petroleum reservoir simulation and performance forecasting in the last decade. The technology has been rapidly assimilated by the industry for highly detailed flow simulation, reservoir management, model calibration and uncertainty assessment. With the advancement in high-resolution data acquisition and seismic technologies, geologic models now routinely consist of multimillion cells. This resulted in a widening gap between geologic modeling, flow simulation and uncertainty assessments. Streamline simulation has effectively bridged this gap. Datta-Gupta manages one of the most active industrial research consortia related to streamline simulation and its applications. Among his numerous honors are the 2009 John Franklin Carll Award from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) for distinguished contribution in the application of engineering principles to petroleum development and recovery; the 2003 SPE Lester C. Uren Award for significant technical contributions in petroleum reservoir characterization and streamline-based flow simulation;
Datta-Gupta earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.S. from the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad, all in petroleum engineering. With Datta-Gupta’s election, Texas A&M University now has 19 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 13 current faculty members and six emeritus. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”
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Leadership Faculty Honors & Awards
Buchanan assumes ASEE presidency
Watson assumes presidency of ABET
Walter Buchanan, head of the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution at Texas A&M University, assumed the presidency of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) June 13 at the conclusion of the society’s annual conference.
Texas A&M University Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Karan Watson was formally installed in October 2011 as presidentelect of ABET, the world leader in higher education accreditation for applied science, computing, engineering, and technology programs.
“ASEE has a long past to be proud of, a significant current presence in engineering and engineering technology education, and a future with a lot of promise. It is a great honor for me to have the opportunity to be its president for this next year,” Buchanan said. “I would like to work on what ASEE is doing for potential engineering and engineering technology students and show them the benefits of an engineering career and how they can get their education for less cost.”
She assumes the presidency in October 2012.
Buchanan succeeds Don Giddens, retired dean of the School of Engineering at Georgia Tech, as president. The presidentelect is Kenneth Galloway, dean of the School of Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Buchanan will serve one year as president and then as immediate past president for one year. Buchanan has been a member of ASEE since 1984. Among his honors are being elected a Fellow of the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE); a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME); member of the NSPE Board of Directors; past chair of the ASEE Engineering Technology Council and the NSPE Professional Engineers in Higher Education; and past member of the Executive Committee of the Technology Accreditation Commission (TAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Buchanan is a recipient of the ASEE James H. McGraw Award, the ASEE Frederick J. Berger Award, the NSPE Outstanding Service Award, and the International Conference on Engineering and Computer Education Award. He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Engineering Technology and the International Journal of Modern Engineering, and has been author or coauthor of more than 100 publications. He has also done consulting for more than 20 different organizations and has been a principal investigator for NSF and other grants. 96
Watson has been involved with ABET and accreditation for more than 20 years. She was a program evaluator from Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 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. She has won numerous teaching awards at the university, college, and department levels at Texas A&M since she joined the faculty in 1983. She joined the university as a member of the electrical engineering faculty and has subsequently 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.
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Faculty Honors & Awards
2012 CAREER Award Winners
62 NSF
CAREER AWARDS
James Caverlee
Srinivas Shakkotai
Zhilei Chen
Le Xie
Gabriel Dos Reis
Byung-Jun Yoon
Computer Science & Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Computer Science & Engineering
Electrical & Computer Engineering
s i n c e
2003
Scott Schaefer
Computer Science & Engineering
2012 Young Faculty Award Winners Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program Award
James Caverlee
Computer Science & Engineering
Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Program Award
Zhilei Chen
Chemical Engineering
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Young Faculty Award
Xing Cheng
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Army Research Office Young Investigator Program Award
Jonathan Rogers
Aerospace Engineering
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Faculty Honors & Awards AEROSPACE ENGINEERING Junkins named TIAS founding director John L. Junkins, Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and holder of the Royce E. Wisenbaker Chair in Engineering, has been named director of the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Study (TIAS). TIAS was established to attract preeminent scholars from throughout the nation and abroad for appointments as faculty fellows at Texas A&M. TIAS faculty fellows will engage Texas A&M faculty and students to enrich the intellectual climate, enhance research programs, and strengthen educational experiences across the university. Junkins is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics, and played a leading role in building Texas A&M’s aerospace engineering program to national prominence. Mortari named senior member of IEEE Associate Professor Daniele Mortari has been named a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He is a member of the American Astronautical Society (AAS) Space Flight Mechanics Technical Committee, an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Associate Fellow, a member of the IEEE Judith A. Resnik Award Committee, and associate editor of AAS’s Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, the International Journal of Navigation and Observation, and IEEE’s Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. He has received numerous awards, including NASA’s Group Achievement award for San Marco V satellite and the 2007 IEEE Judith A. Resnik Award “for innovative designs of orbiting spacecraft constellations, and efficient algorithms for star identification and spacecraft attitude estimation.” Rogers receives ARO Young Investigator Award Assistant Professor Jonathan Rogers received the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award for his proposal, “State Estimation for Complex Dynamical Systems Using Belief Function Theory.” The threeyear award with funding of $150,000 was awarded through ARO’s Complex Dynamics and Systems program. Rogers has collaborated extensively with the Army Research Lab over the past five years with work on smart weapons guidance and control research. Rogers leads the Helicopter and Unmanned Systems Laboratory at Texas A&M and brings experience in both government and academia, contributing extensively to the field of guidance, navigation, and control systems for autonomous vehicles. BIOLOGICAL AND AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING
Fipps receives ASABE irrigation award Professor Guy Fipps has received the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Advancement of Surface Irrigation award for his work advancing surface irrigation and saving water in Texas and abroad. Fipps is known for his development of a combination of tools, including geographic information, land surveys and databases, used by irrigators to improve efficiency and reduce irrigation water losses. Fipps is a member of numerous professional organizations,
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including ASABE, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. Committee on Irrigation and Drainage, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Water Resources Association. Auvermann, Faulkner appointed to EPA advisory board Professor Brent Auvermann (pictured above) and Assistant Professor Brock Faulkner were selected to serve on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science Advisory Board Animal Feeding Operations Panel. The panel of experts will review EPA’s methodologies for estimating air emissions from animal feeding operations. Auvermann specializes in livestock air quality, manure management and water quality. He has twice been honored by the American Society of Biological and Agricultural Engineers (ASABE), in 2004 with the Nolan Mitchell Young Extension Worker award and in 1991 with the Robert E. Stewart Engineering-Humanities Award. Faulkner specializes in characterizing and mitigating air pollution from agricultural production and processing operations. In 2011 Faulkner was one of ASABE’s “New Faces of Engineering” and in 2009 was named Young Engineer of the Year by the ASABE Texas Section. BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING Coté appointed IEEE fellow Gerard Coté, the Charles H. and Bettye Barclay Professor and department head, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Coté was recognized for the “development of innovative optical sensors for in vitro and in vivo medical diagnosis and monitoring.” Coté is also a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering Society and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). Coté is a worldwide expert in the design and development of optical techniques for diagnostic and biomedical sensing applications. Kristen Maitland promoted to SPIE senior membership Assistant Professor Kristen Maitland has been promoted to senior membership in SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. The honor is similar to the society’s fellows program, but recognizes members for their professional contributions at an earlier stage in their careers. Maitland has served on and chaired the Membership Committee. She also has served as an executive member of the Women in Optics group, as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for SPIE Professional magazine, as a reviewer for SPIE journals, and as the SPIE student chapter adviser at Texas A&M. Start-up company led by Maitland wins prize for innovation A startup company led by Associate Professor Duncan Maitland and located at Texas A&M has received a prize for innovation from the Houston Technology Center, Texas’ largest technology incubator and accelerator. Shape Memory Therapeutics Inc. was awarded second place for the Goradia Innovation Prize, which recognizes the best innovations from leading Texas Gulf Coast universities and research institutions and encourages bringing those innovations to the marketplace. Housed in the Texas A&M Bioscience Business Accelerator, Shape Memory Therapeutics was founded in 2009 to commercialize innovative medical devices based on shape memory
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Faculty Honors & Awards polymer materials developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and through the Texas Engineering Experiment Station of The Texas A&M University System. Yakovlev named fellow of the Optical Society of America Professor Vladislav V. Yakovlev was elevated to the rank of fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA). He was one of 66 individuals among OSA’s regular members to be so distinguished in 2012. He was recognized for the development of new nonlinear-optical techniques for diagnostics and imaging, and their applications to medicine and biology. Yakovlev has received several awards, including a Research Corporation Award and the National Science Foundation CAREER award. He has written and published numerous scholarly articles and served as editor for Biochemical Applications of Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy. CHEMICAL ENGINEERING Chen receives Young Investigator Award, NSF CAREER Award Assistant Professor Zhilei Chen received the Young Investigator Research Program Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. This award will support Chen’s basic research on developing proteinaceous material for efficient enzyme immobilization onto electrodes to create more efficient and longer lasting enzymatic biofuel cells. Chen also received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. Chen will receive $400,000 throughout the next five years for her research, which will develop a novel protein polymer hydrogel as a general scaffold for the immobilization of enzymes and bioactive proteins. Chen’s research focuses on applying protein engineering principles for biotechnology applications. She also is working on engineering agents for the treatment of various viral infections, including hepatitis C virus and HIV, and the identification of novel drug targets. El-Halwagi pens new textbook on process design McFerrin Professor Mahmoud El-Halwagi is the author of a newly published textbook on process engineering, Sustainable Design through Process Integration. The book serves as a resource tool for systematically enhancing process performance and developing novel and sustainable process designs and is applicable to process engineers, industrial decision makers and researchers in the field. It’s also ideal for use as a text in an upperlevel undergraduate or an introductory graduate course on process design and sustainability. El-Halwagi is internationally known for his pioneering contributions in the fields of sustainable design and process integration. Lutkenhaus invited to NAE education symposium Assistant Professor Jodie Lutkenhaus was selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s 17th Annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium, which was held in November 2011 at the National Academies’ Beckman Center in Irvine, Calif. As one of a select number of participants convening at this symposium, Lutkenhaus was recognized as a faculty member who is actively teaching in a U.S. engineering program and has implemented significant innovations in her classes. Lutkenhaus focuses on designing organic
thin films and nanostructures to enable the development of novel organic energy systems and smart-coatings. Wilhite named to editorial board for Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research Associate Professor Benjamin Wilhite was named to a three-year term on the editorial advisory board of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research, a weekly publication of the American Chemical Society that reports industrial and academic research in the broad fields of applied chemistry and chemical engineering. Wilhite’s research focuses on reaction engineering, specifically upon understanding and manipulating how transport phenomena influence chemical kinetics in industrial applications. Wilhite was previously named to the board of directors for the International Symposia on Chemical Reaction Engineering, the premier organization in the field of chemical reaction engineering. Civil Engineering Hawkins honored with educator award Associate Professor Gene Hawkins received the prestigious 2012 Wilbur S. Smith Distinguished Transportation Educator Award from the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). ITE awards the Wilbur S. Smith award annually to recognize a transportation educator who has made an outstanding contribution to the transportation profession by relating academic studies to the actual practice of transportation. The wording on the award reads, in part: “Dr. Hawkins typifies the ‘best of the best’ in his personal commitment to achieving excellence, both as an academician and as a professional. His commitment to students has been demonstrated by the personal attention that he gives to his students and the assistance he gives them in furthering their careers.” Epps Martin wins AAPT Award, elected to board Professor Amy Epps Martin received the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists (AAPT) Board of Directors Award of Recognition. Epps Martin also began her term as one of two AAPT directors at large. Epps Martin is head of the Division of Materials Engineering in the civil engineering department and a research engineer for the Texas Transportation Institute. She earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests are in pavement materials, performance and specifications, including sustainable pavement materials. Wang receives New Faculty Member Award for transportation contributions Assistant Professor Bruce Wang in the Transportation Engineering Division received the Council of University Transportation Centers-American Road and Transportation Builders Association New Faculty Member Award, which recognizes outstanding teaching, research and service by a new tenure-track faculty member in transportation. Wang currently chairs the Freight Planning and Logistics Committee and several subcommittees of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. His research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Federal Department of Transportation, the Department of Army, the Transportation Research Board, and others.
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Faculty Honors & Awards Computer Science and Engineering Caverlee wins NSF CAREER Award, AFOSR award Assistant Professor James Caverlee received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for his research project, “Real-Time Crowd-Oriented Search and Computation Systems.” The award will fund a five-year program with the goal of developing “the framework, algorithms, and systems for crowd-oriented search and computing, so that crowds discovered in emerging social systems may become part of in situ human-computational systems.” Caverlee also received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research-Young Investigator Program grant for his research project, “Detecting, Analyzing, Modeling, and Predicting Strategic Manipulation and Adversarial Propaganda in Social Media,” to detect, analyze, model and predict strategic manipulation and adversarial propaganda in social media. Dos Reis receives NSF CAREER Award Assistant Professor Gabriel Dos Reis received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for his continuing investigation of formal-methods-based principles and tools to make the practice of programming a more mathematical activity for ordinary programmers. Dos Reis’ research interests include computer algebra, mathematical software, formal verification, programming languages, compiler construction, and generic programming. He is a trustee of the Calculemus project; project lead of the OpenAxiom computer algebra system; project lead of the Liz programming system; member of the ISO C++ Standardization committee; and member of the AFNOR (French national body for standardizations) C++ committee. Rauchwerger named IEEE fellow Professor Lawrence Rauchwerger was named an IEEE in recognition of his contributions to threadlevel speculation, parallelizing compilers and parallel libraries. Rauchwerger’s research has targeted the area of high-performance compilers, thread-level speculation in both software and hardware implementation, libraries for parallel and distributed computing, and adaptive optimizations. Among Rauchwerger’s many accomplishments are an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award and the IBM Faculty Awards in 2007 and 2008. Schaefer receives NSF CAREER Award Associate Professor Scott Schaefer received a 2012 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his research in graphics and visualization. The investigation of “the fundamental connection between parameterization and surface shape/quality for parametric curves, surfaces and volumes” drives Schaefer’s research. He will expand on the concept of nonuniform parameterization of surfaces and volumes to design new representations that allow the user to control or automatically adapt the parameterization of these shapes during the design process. This work has potential applications in surface design in the automotive, aeronautics, and entertainment industries and even in finite element computations for physical simulations.
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Sketch Recognition Lab researchers honored at IAAI Researchers in the Sketch Recognition Lab were honored at the 24th Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI) in July. The researchers received the IAAI Innovation Award for the paper, “Mechanix: A Sketch-Based Tutoring System for Statics Course.” The paper was written by students Stephanie Valentine, Francisco Vides, George Lucchese, David Turner, Hong-hoe Kim and Wenzhe Li, with Associate Professor Tracy Hammond from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and Assistant Professor Julie Linsey from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Williams receives Denton Award Associate Professor Tiffani Williams received the 2011 Denice Denton Emerging Leader Award at the 2011 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Williams’ research interests are in the areas of bioinformatics and high-performance computing—especially as it relates to reconstructing evolutionary trees (or phylogenies) of organisms. She has served on several conference program committees and is currently the associate editor for Systematic Biology. She also is committed to the advancement of women and members of underrepresented groups in computing. Examples include serving as technical program co-chair for the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, serving on the program committee for the Grace Hopper Celebration, and speaking at various career mentoring events. Workshop celebrates Stroustrup’s career The Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Parasol Lab at Texas A&M held the “Workshop on Quality Software: A Festschrift for Bjarne Stroustrup” to honor and celebrate the career of Bjarne Stroustrup in April. Stroustrup, Distinguished Professor and holder of the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science, is the designer and original implementer of the C++ programming language. A member of the National Academy of Engineering, Stroustrup also took an active role in the creation of the ANSI/ISO standard for C++ and continues to work on the maintenance and revision of that standard. Over the past decade, C++ has become the most widely used language supporting object-oriented programming by making abstraction techniques affordable and manageable for mainstream projects. Wu and Taylor win Best Paper Award TEES Research Scientist Xingfu Wu and Royce E. Wisenbaker Professor Valerie Taylor (pictured) won the Best Paper Award among 53 accepted papers in the 14th IEEE International Conference on Computational Science & Engineering. Wu works with Taylor’s research group, Prophesy, which has an NSF-funded project to analyze and model parallel application performance and energy on multicore systems. He is a senior member of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Taylor joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2003 as head of the Department of Computer Science, a position she held until 2011. Her research interests
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Faculty Honors & Awards are in the area of high-performance computing. She has written or cowritten more than 100 papers in these areas. Taylor is a member of ACM and senior member of the IEEE Computer Society. Electrical and Computer Engineering Balog receives Rutgers School of Engineering Award Assistant Professor Robert S. Balog Jr. received the 2011 Rutgers Distinguished Engineer Award for his pioneering work in developing efficient and effective electrical energy conversion methods for use in the emerging field of photovoltaic renewable energy (solar energy). The award is given annually to a Rutgers engineering graduate who is considered a pioneer in his or her respective discipline. Balog’s efforts have made an impact in the design of microinverters and AC photovoltaic modules for distributed solar energy harvesting and power-grid integration. These enable lower-cost solar energy systems particularly suited for residential applications. He was recently selected for membership in the External Body of the Hungarian Academy of Science. Bhattacharyya elected a foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences Robert M. Kennedy Professor S.P. Bhattacharyya was elected a Foreign Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (Academia Brasileira de Ciências). Bhattacharyya was elected for “distinguished contributions in engineering and significant contributions to engineering in Brazil.” Bhattacharyya established the first graduate program in control engineering in Brazil in the 1970s, and many of his students are leaders in Brazilian academia. He joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1980. His research focus is control theory, and his current research is directed at developing new and general model-free, measurement-based approaches to the analysis, synthesis and design of real-world systems, where models are often incomplete, unreliable or simply unavailable. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Cheng receives DARPA Young Faculty Award Associate Professor Xing Cheng received the Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for his proposal, “Surface-PhononPolariton-Enhanced Infrared Antennas for Exceptionally Sensitive Chemical Detection.” Cheng’s proposal offers a novel device to achieve enormous intensity enhancement at mid-infrared wavelengths by placing field-enhancing infrared antennas on a surface that is capable of exciting surface phonon modes. Upon completion, signal enhancement by nearly three orders of magnitude above the-state-of-the-art SEIRA technique is expected. Cheng earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2005. Dougherty elected IEEE Fellow Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Chair Ed Dougherty was elected to the rank of fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers “for contributions to the development of genomic signal processing.” Dougherty is a pioneer in the study of translational genomics via the use of engineering techniques such as signal processing,
pattern recognition and control theory. He directs the Texas A&M Genomic Signal Processing Lab at Texas A&M, and is director of the Computational Biology Division of the Translational Genomics Research Institute and adjunct professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He is author of 16 books and more than 275 journal publications. Enjeti receives inaugural technical achievement award Prasad Enjeti, TI Professor III in Analog Engineering, was named the inaugural recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Power Electronics Society (PELS) R. David Middlebrook Technical Achievement Award for his outstanding technical contributions in power electronics. Enjeti joined the Texas A&M electrical engineering faculty in 1988. A registered professional engineer in Texas, Enjeti is the lead developer of the Fuel Cell Power Systems Laboratory and Power Electronics and Power Quality Laboratory at Texas A&M. Georghiades to receive CTTC Service Award Costas N. Georghiades, former department head and current associate dean for research, has been selected to receive the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC) Service Award for 2012. This award recognizes members of the CTTC of the IEEE Communications Society who have distinguished records of service. Georghiades, holder of the Delbert A. Whitaker Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering, was cited “for sustained contributions as editor, conference program chair and CTTC chair.” A registered professional engineer in Texas, Georghiades is a Fellow of IEEE. Haiyan Wang invited to participate in NAE Frontiers of Engineering symposium Associate Professor Haiyan Wang joined a group of the nation’s brightest young engineers who were selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 17th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. The symposium was held in September at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., and focused on additive manufacturing, engineering sustainable buildings, neuroprosthetics and semantic processing. Wang joined the Texas A&M faculty in January 2006. Among her honors are the ASM Silver Medal Award 2011, National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award in 2009, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2008, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2008 and the Air Force Research Office’s Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) in 2007. Hu serves as general chair for premier conference Associate Professor Jiang Hu was the general chair for the premier conference on the physical design of VLSI circuits and systems, the 21st ACM International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) in Napa, Calif. Hu’s research interest is in computer-aided design for VLSI circuits, especially on large-scale circuit optimization, clock network synthesis, robust design and on-chip communication. Honors include receiving a best paper award at the 2011 International Conference
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Faculty Honors & Awards on Computer-Aided Design and the ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference in 2001, and he received an IBM Invention Achievement Award in 2003. Kezunovic receives the IEEE Standards Education Award Mladen Kezunovic, the Eugene E. Webb Professor, was presented the 2011 IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB) Standards Education Award “for educating students and engineers about the importance and benefits of interoperability standards.” Kezunovic is the site director of the Power Engineering Research Center and deputy director of the Center for Electrical Vehicles-Convergence of Transportation and Electricity, both NSF I/UCRCs at Texas A&M. He has published more than 400 papers in journals and conference proceedings, and has been invited to give more than 100 lectures worldwide. He is a distinguished speaker of the IEEE Power Engineering Society, a fellow of the IEEE, a member of CIGRÉ and a registered professional engineer in Texas. Kish receives honorary doctorate Professor Laszlo Kish will receive the honorary doctorate title from the University of Szeged in Hungary. Kish will have the title of “Doctor Honoris Causa” conferred upon him for his “outstanding research work and achievements, as well as the impressive range of cooperation activities accomplished jointly with colleagues in favor of the university.” Kish directs the Fluctuation and Noise Exploitation Laboratory. Honors include receiving the Doctor Honoris Causa title from Uppsala University in Sweden in 2011, the 2001 Benzelius Prize of the Royal Society of Science of Sweden and the Doctor of Science (Physics) title from the Hungarian Academy of Science in 2001. Kumar receives ACM SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contribution Award, Distinguished Alumnus Award P.R. Kumar, holder of the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering, received the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems (ACM SIGMOBILE) Outstanding Contribution Award, the highest honor the SIGMOBILE community bestows on an individual in recognition of the lasting technical contribution made by a person and his or her influence on the field. Kumar was chosen “for pioneering contributions to mobile computing and communications and wireless networking.” He also has received the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras 2012 Distinguished Alumnus Award. Kumar joined the Texas A&M faculty and the department’s computer engineering group in Fall 2011. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and has made groundbreaking contributions that have helped to shape industrial practice and research in both semiconductor manufacturing and wireless networking. Kumar is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He also is the recipient of the Donald P. Eckman Award, the Engineering Council Award for Excellence in Advising, the IEEE Field Award for Control Systems and the IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
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Russell receives Attwood Associate Award Distinguished Professor B. Don Russell received the 2011 Attwood Award from the International Council on Large Electric Systems (CIGRÉ). Russell, the Harry E. Bovay Jr. Endowed Chair, is a nationally recognized electric power engineer. His specialty is the automation, control and protection of power systems. Other honors for Russell include being elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and chair of the NAE’s Electric Power and Energy section, and being named a fellow of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers. Russell is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institute of Electrical Engineers of England and the National Society of Professional Engineers, and past president of the IEEE Power and Energy Society. Watson receives Distinguished Engineer Award Karan Watson, Regents Professor and provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, has been named a recipient of the Texas Tech University 2012 Distinguished Engineer Award. Watson earned bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Texas Tech all in electrical engineering. She is president-elect for Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology Inc. and will serve as president from October 2012 to October 2013. She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society for Engineering Education. Her awards and recognitions include the U.S. President’s Award for Mentoring Minorities and Women in Science and Technology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science mentoring award and the IEEE International Undergraduate Teaching Award. Xie receives NSF CAREER Award, ORAU Award Assistant Professor Le Xie received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). The objective of Xie’s CAREER project is to investigate a novel modeling paradigm that seamlessly integrates physics-based and data-driven models of distributed resources for provision of ubiquitous energy storage services in power systems. Xie said that once successfully pursued, his project will have transformative impact on engineering sustainable electricity services of the future. His research interest includes modeling and control of large-scale complex systems, smart grid applications in support of renewable energy integration and electricity markets. Xiong wins top 10 percent paper award at conference Professor Zixiang Xiong won a top 10 percent paper award at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP) Workshop. Xiong, Ph.D. student Yifu Zhang and postdoc Yang Yang won the award for their paper, “Depth Camera Assisted Multiterminal Video Coding.” Xiong’s research interests include network information theory, code designs and applications, networked multimedia, and biomedical engineering. Xiong is an IEEE fellow. Other honors include Young Investigator Awards from the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Army Research Office, and the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. engineeringmagazine .tam u .ed u
Faculty Honors & Awards Yoon receives NSF CAREER Award Assistant Professor Byung-Jun Yoon has received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. Yoon received his CAREER award for his proposal, “Models and Algorithms for Comparative Analysis of Biological Networks.” Yoon’s research interests include genomic signal processing, bioinformatics, and computational systems biology, especially in developing probabilistic models and algorithms that can be used in biological sequence and network analysis. Recent honors include the Best Paper Award from the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference 2011. Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Clark receives IIE teaching award Norm Clark, senior lecturer and associate director of the Thomas and Joan Read Center for Distribution Research and Education, received the 2012 Institute of Industrial Engineers Logistics and Supply Chain Teaching Award in March. Clark has taught undergraduate courses in sales engineering, purchasing applications in distribution and manufacturer–distributor relations. Colleagues say his use of interactive teaching methods and his ability to encourage discussion in classroom situations help to create memorable learning experiences in both industry and academia. Nepal appointed associate editor for Engineering Management Journal Bimal Nepal has been appointed associate editor for the Engineering Management Journal. Nepal is an assistant professor in the Industrial Distribution Program in the Department of Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution. He earned his Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Wayne State University in December 2005. Bimal has been recognized with several teaching and research awards, including an EMJ Best Paper Award and the Best Presenter Award at an international conference in London. Industrial and Systems Engineering Çetinkaya elected IIE fellow Professor Sila Çetinkaya has been named a fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE). Çetinkaya’s research interests include supply chain management, inventory theory and applied probability. In 2001 she was granted the prestigious CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. In addition, she has received the Meritorious Service Award from Operations Research and was named Outstanding Young Industrial Engineer by IIE. She is a member of IIE, INFORMS (the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) and the International Society of Automation.
Johnson receives 2011 best reviewer award Associate Professor Andrew Johnson received the 2011 Best Reviewer Award from Omega, The International Journal of Management Science. Johnson joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2006. His research interests are in productivity measurement, health care, warehouse operations and design, manufacturing, and energy and environmental regulation. In 2009 he was an Invited Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Mechanical Engineering Duggleby, former student paper wins ASME Knapp Award Assistant Professor Andrew Duggleby and Yuval Doron received the 2012 Knapp Award from the Fluids Engineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering for their paper, “Optical Density Measurements and Analysis for Single-mode InitialCondition Buoyancy-driven Mixing.” Duggleby joined the Texas A&M Engineering faculty in 2008. He directs the Fluids, Turbulence and Fundamental Transport Lab in the mechanical engineering department. Doron, Duggleby’s former student, earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M and is currently a lecturer in the department. Jacobs invited to NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium Associate Professor Timothy J. Jacobs was invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium in November 2011 at the National Academies’ Beckman Center in Irvine, Calif. The symposium brings together some of the nation’s most engaged and innovative engineering educators to recognize, reward and promote effective, substantive and inspirational engineering education. Jacobs came to Texas A&M in 2006. He was previously honored for his teaching with the Society of Automotive Engineers Ralph R. Teetor Education Award. Malak wins best paper award at ASME conference Assistant Professor Richard Malak received the 2011 Robert E. Fulton Best Paper Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Computers and Information in Engineering society at the 31st Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. Malak and his former graduate student Robert Parker won the award for their paper, “Technology Characterization Models and Their Use in Designing Complex Systems.” Malak’s research interest is to discover new principles, methods and tools for systems modeling and decision making. Rajagopal receives honorary doctorates, recognized by journals K.R. Rajagopal, Distinguished Professor, Regents Professor and the Forsyth Chair, received honorary doctorates from Charles University in Prague, the University of Pretoria and the University of Isai. He also was honored with special editions of several journals in celebration of his 60th birthday. Rajagopal has been honored internationally for his significant contributions
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Faculty Honors & Awards to the world of continuum mechanics, computational mechanics, biomechanics and technology. Among these honors was his election to the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the international Hall of Fame for Engineering, Science and Technology. He has also been selected to appear on ISIHighlyCited.com because of his exceptional citation count in the field of engineering. Rajagopal also has received patents for his continuum mechanics–related work in fields as divergent as biomechanics and granular material characterization to air brake control systems. Rajagopal 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. Schneider receives AIAA Dryden Lectureship award Visiting Professor William Schneider presented the 2012 Dryden Lectureship in Research for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The Lectureship emphasizes the great importance of basic research to the advancement of aeronautics and astronautics and is a salute to research scientists and engineers. Schneider joined the mechanical engineering faculty at Texas A&M in 2000 after having served as a senior engineer for space systems and assistant director for engineering at NASA Johnson Space Center. Before retiring from NASA, Schneider was the agency’s leading expert on mathematical engineering mechanics, structural and mechanical design, spacecraft entry thermal protection systems, and large space structures. Nuclear Engineering Poston recognized for ANSI standards work Professor John Poston received a plaque of appreciation for work as co-chair of the American National Standards Institute standards committee. Poston is a member of the International Nuclear Academy (INEA) and a fellow of the Health Physics Society, the American Nuclear Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been at Texas A&M since 1985 and previously served as head of the Department of Nuclear Engineering. His expertise is internal dosimetry, external dose calculations and thermoluminescence dosimetry. Nuclear fuels research receives award A beryllium oxide (BeO) nuclear fuels research collaboration between Texas A&M, the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, Purdue University and IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. has been selected to receive the Significant Contribution Award from the Materials Science and Technology Division of the American Nuclear Society. Texas A&M research team members include Associate Professor Sean McDeavitt (pictured above) and Associate Professor Jean Ragusa. The team was recognized for its paper, “Introducing a High Thermal Conductivity UO2-BeO Nuclear Fuel Concept.”
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Petroleum Engineering Blasingame to receive SPE Lucas Medal Thomas A. Blasingame, professor and holder of the Robert L. Whiting Professorship, has been selected to receive the Anthony F. Lucas Technical Leadership Gold Medal from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). The Lucas Medal is the highest award the society gives for technical achievements in petroleum engineering. Blasingame is the fourth Texas A&M petroleum engineering faculty member to receive the award in the past decade. He joined the Texas A&M faculty in 1991 and integrates his skills as a reservoir engineer, fluid dynamicist, pressure transient analyst and mathematician in the increasingly complex domain of well test analysis. He is actively involved in SPE and the American Society for Engineering Education. Moridis receives DOE award for flow-estimation work Visiting Professor George Moridis and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Flow-Estimation Team received the U.S. Department of Energy Secretarial Honor Reward for their work on the estimation of the Macondo well flow rate. Moridis has been a staff scientist in the Earth Sciences Division of LBNL since 1991. Moridis was a Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) distinguished lecturer for 2009–2010 and was elected an SPE distinguished member in 2010. He is an associate editor of four scientific journals and a reviewer for 26 scientific publications. Nasr-El-Din earns “A Peer Apart” status from SPE Hisham A. Nasr-El-Din, professor and holder of the John Edgar Holt Chair, has completed more than 100 reviews during his dedicated volunteer service on the editorial review committee of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), earning him “A Peer Apart” status—just one of 110 SPE members to do so. He has been a prolific researcher and developer of new technologies over a 35year career that has led to important advances in petroleum engineering operations. He has trained more than 200 engineers, published nearly 125 papers in peerreviewed journals, presented nearly 250 at conferences and meetings, and currently holds two U.S. patents. Schubert named SPE distinguished member Jerome Schubert, associate professor and the Larry A. Cress ’76 Faculty Fellow, was named a distinguished member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE). Schubert has more than 30 years in the petroleum industry. His main research areas include deepwater drilling, dual-gradient drilling, managed pressure drilling and well control. Schubert is a coauthor of the textbook Managed Pressure Drilling and an author of more than 40 technical papers. He has been a committee member for several SPE and International Association of Drilling Contractors committees, conferences and events, and a technical editor for SPE Drilling and Completion.
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Faculty Honors & Awards Wattenbarger to receive SPE Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award Professor Robert A. Wattenbarger will receive the 2012 Society of Petroleum Engineers Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements in or contributions to the advancement of petroleum engineering in the area of res足ervoir description and dynamics. Wattenbarger has three main areas of research: gas reservoir engineering, emphasizing production and analysis of tight gas reservoirs, paraffin deposition in wellbores and in reservoirs; electromagnetic heating of reservoirs; and well test analysis and well performance. Research in these areas is centered around reservoir simulation techniques and solutions.
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Chairs & Professorships Professorships
Chairs Albert B. Stevens Chair Christine Ehlig-Economides Petroleum Engineering
Baker Hughes Chair Maria A. Barrufet, P.E. Petroleum Engineering
College of Engineering Chair in Computer Engineering Panganamala R. Kumar 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
George Eppright ’26 Chair William Saric, P.E. Aerospace Engineering
Harold J. Haynes Chair M. Katherine Banks, P.E. Vice Chancellor and Dean of 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, P.E. 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 Petroleum Engineering
J.R. Thompson Department Head Chair Walter W. Buchanan, P.E. Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
Leland T. Jordan ’29 Chair Dara Childs, P.E. Mechanical Engineering
Leonard & Valerie Bruce Leadership Chair F. Barry Lawrence
LeSuer Chair Michael J. King
A.P. & Florence Wiley Professorship III Robin L. Autenrieth, P.E.
Petroleum Engineering
Civil Engineering
L.F. Peterson ’36 Chair Akhil Datta-Gupta, P.E.
Allen-Bradley Professorship V. Jorge Leon, P.E.
Petroleum Engineering
Marcus C. Easterling ’30 Chair Je-Chin Han, P.E. Mechanical Engineering
Mike O’Connor Chair I M. Sam Mannan, P.E. Chemical Engineering
Mike O’Connor Chair II M. Nazmul Karim Chemical Engineering
Noble Chair A. Daniel Hill, P.E. Petroleum Engineering
Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. ’45 Chair J.N. Reddy, P.E. mechanical Engineering
Robert M. Kennedy ’26 Chair Edward R. Dougherty Electrical and Computer 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 Kyle “Terry” Alfriend Aerospace Engineering
TEES Distinguished Research Chair L.S. “Skip” Fletcher, P.E. 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
Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
Arthur McFarland (1905) Professorship Bill Batchelor, P.E. Civil 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. Mechanical Engineering
HTRI Professorship Marvin L. Adams, P.E. Nuclear Engineering
Herbert D. Kelleher Professorship Roger E. Smith, P.E. Civil 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
Joe M. Nesbitt Professorship Dragomir Bukur Chemical Engineering
J.W. Runyon Jr. Professorship I A.L. Narasimha Reddy Electrical and Computer Engineering
J.W. Runyon Jr. Professorship II Aniruddha Datta Electrical and Computer Engineering
Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
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Chairs & Professorships 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. Valkó, P.E.
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.
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. Civil Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Career Development Professorships
Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. Professorship Taher M. Schobeiri
Aghorn Energy Development Professorship Robert H. Lane
Mechanical Engineering
Petroleum Engineering
Raytheon Company Professorship in Computer Science Robin R. Murphy
Beavers Charitable Trust/William F. Urban ’41 Development Professorship David N. Ford, P.E.
Computer Science and Engineering
Civil Engineering
Raytheon Company Professorship in Electrical Engineering Hamid A. Toliyat, P.E.
E.B. Snead ’25 Career Development Professorship I Mark W. Burris
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Civil Engineering
Robert L. Whiting Professorship Thomas A. Blasingame, P.E.
E.B. Snead ’25 Career Development Professorship II Mary Beth D. Hueste, P.E.
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Nelson-Jackson Professorship Gerald Morrison, 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
Rob L. Adams ’40 Professorship Duane A. McVay, P.E. Petroleum 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
Stewart & Stevenson Professorship I Srinivas R. Vadali, P.E. Aerospace Engineering
Stewart & Stevenson Professorship II Michael V. Pishko Biomedical Engineering
Tenneco Professorship Ramesh Talreja Aerospace Engineering
Leland T. Jordan ’29 Career Development Professorship Eric L. Petersen Mechanical Engineering
Michael & Heidi Gatens Professorship John Killough Petroleum Engineering
Ray B. Nesbitt Professorship I Arul Jayaraman Chemical Engineering
Williams Brothers Construction Company Development Professorship I H. “Gene” Hawkins Jr., P.E. Civil Engineering
Zachry Career Development Professorship I Dominique Lord, P.E. Civil Engineering
Zachry Career Development Professorship II Scott Socolofsky Civil Engineering
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
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
TI Professorship I in Analog Engineering Jose Silva-Martinez Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Research Facts 289,000 square feet of lab space 30 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
$112.2 million in sponsored research awards (Fiscal Year 2011)
Federally sponsored research awards
$69.3 million 62%
RESEARCH BY THE NUMBERS 4,442 research projects 2,625 industrial research sponsors 2,181 proposals submitted $413,650 in awards per researcher 66 formal invention disclosures 109
204 Zachry Engineering Center 3126 TAMU COLLEGE STATION, TX 77843-3126