COEN Newsletter Fall 2010

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College of Engineering

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Newsletter Fall 2010

College of Engineering Dean: CHERYL B. SCHRADER (208) 426-1153 Associate Dean for Academic Affairs: JANET CALLAHAN (208) 426-1450 janetcallahan@boisestate.edu Assistant Dean for Research & Infrastructure: REX OXFORD (208) 426-5744 roxford@boisestate.edu Development Director: MELINDA SEEVERS (208) 426-5470 melindaseevers@boisestate.edu

s! e t a D e h t e v Sa

William Kamkwamba, left, visits with construction management students Josh Folger, Tucker Robb and Daryn Giddings at an interactive fair on the Quad.

Boise State Students Learn to Harness the Wind William Kamkwamba, the author of “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind,” the BSU campus read book for the 2010-2011 academic year, joined forces with engineering students on campus with a hands-on wind power activity for all Boise State students.

Civil Engineering Chair: ROBERT HAMILTON (208) 426-3764 rhamilton@boisestate.edu

Students in the Introduction to Engineering courses led by Professor Carol Sevier and the 24 students in the Engineering Residential College led by Associate Dean and Faculty-in-Residence Janet Callahan built circuits by hand (as William did in the book!) which students across campus could use to build and test a small hand-held windmill. The popular activity was one of several hands-on options on display at the BSU Quad during the author’s visit.

Computer Science Chair: MURALI MEDIDI (208) 426-2283 mmedidi@boisestate.edu

Kamkwamba also shared the inspiring story about his search for knowledge and community activism in a free public event at the Morrison Center. He is currently pursuing his dream to become an engineer.

Construction Management Chair: TONY SONGER (208) 426-3716 tonysonger@boisestate.edu

Electrical & Computer Engineering Interim Chair: NADER RAFLA (208) 426-2283 nrafla@boisestate.edu

April 15, 2011 – CM Alumni Golf Tournament

Instructional & Performance Technology

April 16, 2011 – 30th Anniversary Celebration

Chair: DON STEPICH (208) 426-1312 dstepich@boisestate.edu

Materials Science & Engineering Chair: DARRYL BUTT (208) 426-2283 darrylbutt@boisestate.edu

Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering Chair: JAMES FERGUSON (208) 426-4078 jferguson@boisestate.edu

COEN Ranks 16th among Public, Comprehensive Engineering Programs COEN remains among the top-ranked public, comprehensive engineering programs in the annual U.S. News & World Report ranking. Here is the list of the top 16 programs with their scores: 1. US Military Academy, West Point, NY – 4.1 2. California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA – 4.0 3. US Air Force Academy, CO – 4.0 4. US Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD – 4.0 5. California Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA – 3.5

6. US Coast Guard Academy, New London, CT – 3.5 7. Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ – 3.2 8. The Citadel, Charleston, SC – 3.2 9. US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY – 3.2 10. University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO – 3.2 11. Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA – 3.2 12. San Jose State University, San Jose, CA – 3.1 13. University of Michigan – Dearborn, Dearborn, MI – 3.1 14. California State University – Los Angeles, LA, CA – 3.0 15. Miami University – Oxford, Oxford, OH – 3.0 16. Boise State University, Boise, ID – 2.9

From the Dean’s Desk The start of fall semester is always a time of promise and new beginnings. First year students arrive full of enthusiasm and wonder. Returning students come back to classrooms and labs ready for new discoveries. New and returning faculty members prepare lessons and continue challenging research with large numbers of undergraduate and graduate students. Again this fall, we have an increase in enrollment with 1,556 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of 2,021 including students with engineering minors and graduate students. These numbers are up from 1,450 undergraduate students in fall of 2009 and 1,881 overall students that same year. Thanks to the hard work of faculty, staff and students, our College continues to achieve success in many ways: • Research awards in 2010 totalled more than $9.3 million, up from $3.9 million just two years ago. • Graduate student enrollment continues to climb with 463 students conducting research in seven departments. • Undergraduate student Mallory Yates, MBE, was named NASA’s Co-op Student of the Year at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. After spending the summer working in professor Don Plumlee’s micropropulsion lab, she is back in Houston this semester working again for NASA. • New visualization capabilities help us “see” what was previously undiscoverable. Whether we are studying wind energy, biomedicine, or Mars, or training future engineers and scientists, this technology opens new worlds of connection, investigation and understanding. • Well deserved promotions highlight exceptional faculty contributors. • Notable success in engineering education research lays Boise State’s foundation for enhanced STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) teaching and learning at all levels. • Construction Management begins its next thirty years as an academic program. • And, the College again ranks among the nation’s best public, comprehensive engineering schools. After seven years at Boise State University, I remain consistently impressed by the creativity, diligence, ingenuity and entrepreneurship of our students, staff and faculty. What a truly great place to learn and live. Join us!

Cheryl B. Schrader Dean and Professor College of Engineering

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College of Engineering Newsletter | Fall 2010

Visualization Cluster Display Gives Researchers a Powerful New Tool

What did you do this summer?

by Erin Ryan

CS Student Mark Stewart Wrote 30,000 Lines of Code and Started a Company

The College of Engineering is home to a new visualization cluster display — 16 linked monitors powered by layers of high performance computers and many millions of pixels that turn the naked eye into a precision research instrument.

(from left) Graduate students Dana Jacobsen and Brad Baker stand with assistant professor Inanc Senocak and computer systems administrator Martin Lukes in front of the new visualization cluster display in the College of Engineering. Its projection of the Messier 51 “Whirlpool” Galaxy reveals more detail at a much higher resolution than a high-end computer could.

It’s all about programmable GPUs (graphics processing units), according to Inanc Senocak, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering. The cluster is part of his project on integrated supercomputing and visualization for aerodynamics analysis, and he said testing its capabilities has been eye opening.

“This is more detail at a much higher resolution than you would get on a high-end computer,” Senocak said, pointing to the cluster’s crisp projection of minutiae in the electric swirl of the Messier 51 “Whirlpool” Galaxy. “Whether you’re studying biomedicine on a microscope slide or looking at a photograph for clues to past water activity on Mars, displays like this enable a more sophisticated level of investigation and understanding.” The hardware combines the processing power of multiple computers into a single “many-core” system, supporting complex scientific computation and the visualization of massive datasets that are too unwieldy to analyze on small screens and degrade if blown up on big screens. Senocak primarily is using it to conduct computational fluid dynamics simulations. From modeling the dispersal of airborne pollutants in urban environments to identifying favorable wind conditions for energy generation over complex terrain, he said the cluster is essential for fast computations and sensitive analysis. Senocak’s long-term goal is to build a facility that surpasses the resolution of NASA’s 128-screen, 256 million-pixel “hyperwall-2,” which would make Boise State a destination for scientific computing and visualization research. Joining him in this endeavor are computer systems administrator Martin Lukes and computer science graduate students Dana Jacobsen and Brad Baker.

“The technology benefits research and applications in fluid dynamics, climate modeling, wind energy, astrophysics, biology, chemistry and materials, to name a few,” “This surge in computational power, fueled by the programmable manycore GPUs, is expected to lead scientific discovery in the years to come.” – Inanc Senocak, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering

by Margaret Scott

Computer Science undergraduate student Mark Stewart Jr. spent his summer vacation writing software code for his new company, ScheduleTailor, an online web application that helps companies manage employee schedules. Stewart came up with the idea for the online scheduling tool to help roommate, Trevor Shephard, set up employee schedules for the Dawson’s coffee shop in the Multipurpose Building at Boise State which is run by College of Business and Economics students. One thing led to another for the duo, and ScheduleTailor was born. After winning the People’s Choice Award at Idaho Tech Connect’s Tech Launch competition for new tech ideas in May, the two students took their $5,000 prize and began to develop their company’s beta version in earnest. “We are in the pre-release stage now and we’re looking for a beta user,” Stewart said. “Beta customers will help us learn what people want and where the glitches are. We’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go,” the 24-year-old Stewart says. ScheduleTailor is also working with Nebula Shift, a local software development group, to further develop the company. Stewart also credits Rick Ritter of Idaho Tech Connect as a “real mentor to us about how to get this business off the ground.” Stewart says his most important lesson was discovering what matters in the business world. “I learned from a manager's view what it means when you show up late or when you do things that are bad for the company and the bottom line. Now I know that what really matters is being a person who benefits the company in a significant way and who makes people around them feel happy.”

MSE Undergraduate Student Earns Summer Scholarship in Germany Steven Livers, MSE, was awarded a summer scholarship from the International Materials Institute to work in one of the most prestigious groups dealing with nano-ionic non-volatile memory devices in the world at the RheinWestvalishe Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen, Germany. ECE Professor Maria Mitkova helped Livers with his application.

Student Club Aims To Build World’s Fastest Vegetable Oil-Powered Vehicle Boise State is home to more than 200 student clubs, but never has there been one quite like Greenspeed. Fueled by the intrepid vision of six students and two recent graduates in the College of Engineering, its purpose is to design, build and race the world’s fastest vegetable oil-powered vehicle at Utah’s famed Bonneville Salt Flats during Speed Week 2011. Founder Dave Schenker is a mechanical engineering student whose own car is modified to run on vegetable oil. For the past two years he has been recruiting for Greenspeed, which became a sanctioned university organization in June. The club comprises engineering undergraduates Jozey Mitcham, Adrian Rothenbühler and Adam Spiegelman, graduate student Cory Sparks, alumni John Pasley and Jason Brotherton, and former Boise State student Brett Keys, who helped found the project and remains a contributor. visit: http://news.boisestate.edu/update/2010/08/31/student-clubaims-to-build-world%E2%80%99s-fastest-vegetable-oil-powered-vehicle/

Turf buster

Inanc Senocak, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering, observes a high-resolution image of the Majestic Sombrero Galaxy. Thanks to the many-core computing architecture connected to the 16-monitor display, he can see a lot more than would otherwise meet the eye. In addition to visualization research, the technology also supports high-level scientific computation.

Seth Kuhlman, MSME ‘07, ME ‘05 alumnus and lab manager for the university’s Center for Orthopaedic and Biomechanics Research (COBR), is pictured changing a cleat to test on the surface of the turf in the Caven-Williams indoor practice facility. Kuhlman is leading a recently contracted research project for a major golf spike producer. The company wants to move into the football market, and Kuhlman is using Boise State’s “Turf Buster” to test its new cleat design against the industry standard. Kuhlman built the 1,200-pound instrument for an NFL-funded study on stadium surfaces that was proposed and overseen by COBR co-directors Michelle Sabick, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical & Biomedical Engineering, and Ron Pfeiffer, chair and professor in the Department of Kinesiology.

College of Engineering Newsletter | Fall 2010

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1990s Rudy Arzumanov, EE ‘98 Senior Hardware Engineer for DGE, Inc. in Michigan.

Alumni News November 15, 2009. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 2 oz.

Brent Rasumussen, ME ’99, Project Manager for Siemens in Boise.

2000s Brenda Erskine, EE ‘00 loves her job at Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in Anchorage, Alaska. She flies all over Alaska overseeing maintenance and improvement projects at the Native clinics and hospitals. She is pictured at Point Barrow, the farthest North you can go in the United States.

Jenny (Harman) Bush, CE ’02 was named the Young Engineer of the Year at the Idaho Society of Professional Engineers annual meeting in June. The award recognizes young members who have made outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and their communities early in their careers. Pictured below is Dylan Wyatt Bush, born in March.

Torin E. Ford, CS ‘02 Angela R. Stewart and Torin E. Ford welcome their son and future Bronco, Jackson D. Ford, born on

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Jake Brinkerhoff, EE ’04 has been working at Micron Technology Inc. in Boise for 6 years on NAND Flash products in the Quality and Reliability Assurance department. Married to his wife Kristi for 5 years, they are pictured hiking in San Luis Obispo.

Matt Heath, CM ‘ 04 started a new job in Grand Junction Colorado as a General Manager at Southwest Electric Inc. The firm specializes in low volt electrical and communication in the natural gas and oil industry in Western Colorado. He also welcomed a new son, Hudson Bennett Heath, on August 9th. (pictured below)

Jeremy Tucker, ME ‘04 has been a Manufacturing Engineer at ECCO in Boise for the last 6 years. Jeremy and his wife Debbie have four sons. Kevin Turner, EE ‘04 is working for HewlettPackard as a firmware engineer in the Boise R&D Lab. He is the proud father of a second boy, Jesse, born on April 14th, joining older brother, Braden who is two and a half years old.

Dan Russell, ME ‘05 works as a HVAC Systems Designer, Energy Analyst at Engineering Incorporated in Boise. Chris Hale, EE '06 is an SSD Product Engineer at Micron Technology Inc. Chris and his wife have a son named Vincent (pictured) and are expecting their second child.

secondary propulsion system on Seawolf class submarines, and on occasion gets to work on mechanical components for deep submergence applications. Joshua Martin, CM ‘07 works for MarCon Inc. in Meridian as a Project Manager. Joshua and his wife, Charmolita, have a one year old son named Rowen. (pictured below)

Kelli Olsen, CM ‘07 is working for Kiewit currently at the West Closure Pump Station in New Orleans, LA, building the largest pump station in the world as a field engineer. This pump station will be able to pump 9,000,000 gallons of water a minute. Currently, she is working on driving H-Pile, concrete Pile, and sheet pile.

weighed 6 lb 6oz. Scott works for O-K Gravel Works in Cascade.

College of Engineering Newsletter | Fall 2010

Sona Andrews, Boise State’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, as well as the principal investigator of the initiative.

by Mike Journee

The underlying theme of the project is student self-authorship, an educational framework in which students immerse themselves in genuine experiences such as research, teaching K-12 students, and intellectually engaging with peers and faculty. Personally identifying as a scientist, engineer, mathematician or STEM teacher enhances student learning and success. The STEM Central STATION will involve faculty across campus by promoting and supporting faculty understanding of student-centered teaching methods in STEM courses and the inclusion of students in research.

Innovative methods to educate the next generation of scientists, engineers and teachers of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are the focus of a five-year, $1.25 million grant awarded to Boise State University by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The award – one of only 15 given nationally by the NSF – is in response to Boise State’s wide-ranging initiatives to enhance STEM teaching and learning at all levels – K-12 through graduate education. This new grant will allow project teams across the Boise State campus, Idaho and the region to join forces and elevate the priority, visibility, scope and effectiveness of STEM education research.

Shatakshi Goyal, EE ‘10 is one of the three finalists nationally for the HKN Outstanding ECE Student Award. She is employed at Hewlett-Packard in Boise.

“Everywhere you turn in the world of K-20 education, STEM is at the forefront. It is an area of national focus that not only has the attention of the highest levels of our nation’s government, but also our education leaders here in Idaho,” said Boise State President Bob Kustra. “In anticipation of this national urgency, Boise State has been quietly putting intense focus on this issue through a wide range of initiatives that include research, community partnerships and institutional realignments.” The funding will be used to create the STEM Central STATION at Boise State, a new office for coordinating NSF-related and other STEM programs on campus and throughout Idaho. In the initial three years of the award, the grant is in the amount of $750,000. An additional $500,000 NSF allocation is planned the fourth and fifth years of the award, pending a progress review and available funds, making the anticipated total funding $1.25 million. Through the STEM Central STATION office, Boise State and the NSF hope to research and further develop emerging STEM education best practices to help overcome a national dearth of qualified teachers in STEM-related subjects and entice more students to pursue those areas of study.

Bryce Simpson, ECE ‘10 is employed by Schweitzer Engineering Labs in Boise, and will start working on his master's degree at Boise State in the fall.

Alumni Notes We want to stay in touch. Please send your updates to Leandra Aburusa-Lete at laburusa@boisestate.edu

R U Following Us?

Nora Lindberg, MS IPT '04, has been promoted to Company Training Coordinator at W R Systems, Ltd, headquartered in Fairfax, VA. She and husband Bob live and work in Virginia Beach when they're not at their farm in the Blue Ridge mountains. (Note: Ponies to arrive any day...)

STEM Education Research Gets Boost From $1.25 Million NSF Grant

Michael Stephens, ME ‘06 works in the Ocean Engineering Department at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. He is primarily responsible for the mechanical and hydraulic components for the

David Denton, CM ‘09, employed at Washinton River Protection Solutions in Richland, WA as a Planner/Scheduler. C.W. Franz, EE ‘09, works for PacificCorp Energy in Salt Lake City.

Boise State College of Engineering Alumni

http://www.facebook.com/ group.php?gid=95564512914

Barbara Morgan, Boise State’s distinguished educator in residence, said the increasing focus on helping teachers master new thinking about STEM education should be at the core of the nation’s response to this issue. “Teachers hold the key in creating our nation’s next generation of scientists and engineers,” said Morgan, a former NASA astronaut and Idaho elementary school teacher. “Only by giving them the tools they need to do their job will we become successful in this crucial effort.” Patricia Pyke, previously the director of education research in Boise State’s College of Engineering, will direct STEM Central STATION. “The STEM Central STATION will provide students and faculty with routes and directions to reach their teaching and learning destinations,” said Pyke. “On our journey, our team will study the effectiveness of learner-centered curricular and extracurricular activities on student success and faculty engagement.”

COEN Faculty Members Receive Promotion/Tenure Promoted to Professor: Yonnie Chyung, Department of Instructional & Performance Technology

BSUEngineering

http://twitter.com/BSUEngineering

Scott Freeman, CM ‘08 and Julie Freeman, ME ‘09, are the proud parents of Mabel Jo Freeman, born July 23, 2010. Mabel

Cheryl Schrader, Sona Andrews, Louis Nadelson, Patricia Pyke, Sharon McGuire and Karen Viskupic.

“Boise State’s position as an emerging research university provides an ideal laboratory to study institutional transformation in STEM education and become a model metropolitan university recognized for integrating teaching, learning and research,” said

In addition to Andrews, the project’s interdisciplinary team of co-principal investigators includes Sharon McGuire, vice provost for undergraduate studies, Louis Nadelson, assistant professor of education, Cheryl Schrader, dean of the College of Engineering, and Karen Viskupic, education program manager for the Department of Geosciences.

Bill Knowlton, Department of Materials Science & Engineering and Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Yonnie Chyung Bill Knowlton

Amy Moll

Tony Songer

Amy Moll, Department of Materials Science & Engineering Tony Songer, Department of Construction Management

Promoted to Associate Professor and Granted Tenure: http://coen.boisestate.edu/aboutus /Blogs.asp

Megan Frary, Department of Materials Science & Engineering

Megan Frary

Tony Marker

Tony Marker, Department of Instructional & Performance Technology College of Engineering Newsletter | Fall 2010

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Sweet Success at NASA

by Margaret Scott

Mechanical engineering senior Mo Nguyen can’t stop smiling when she talks about her successful summer internship at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. She worked in the Advanced Materials and Processing Branch of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate with students from the University of Alabama Huntsville, Old Dominion University, University of Virginia, and New York University among others.

Mo

Along with researcher Karen Taminger, Nguyen worked on assembling the second generation portable Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication (EBF3) system. She said the process is similar to rapid prototyping in the College of Engineering except it works with metals like aluminum, titanium and iconel. The team proposed bringing the process onto the International Space Station in 2013.

Jake

“The highlight of my summer was when my mentor talked to me about wanting to hire me as a junior engineer after I graduate to design/build the EBF3 system for the space station,” she said. “Working for NASA is my dream job so hearing that made me feel that all the effort I put into the summer was worth it.” Computer science senior Jake Forsberg is really excited about autonomous vehicles. That’s because he spent the summer working with nine other students from schools including MIT, Vassar, Virginia Tech, Western Kentucky and the University of Virginia on a multidisciplinary team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.

Ellen Rabenburg, MSE ‘09 spent her summer building and destroying thermally fail-safe composite materials, all in the name of science. She says she still can’t believe she was accepted for the summer internship program at NASA’s Langley Research Center. The first year materials science graduate student worked in the Advanced Materials and Processing Branch creating a material that would resist heating when used in a high temperature environment up to 2000° F.

“We fused carbon fiber fabric and a polymer resin to fabricate the panels which can be used for shielding applications,” she said. After they were built, the strength of the panels were tested using a four-point bend test where they were pushed in at the center. “For me the testing was really fun because when it broke, pieces flew everywhere,” Although she is a self-described “Air Force brat” who grew up everywhere, the time at Langley was her first East Coast experience. Rabenburg spent weekends touring the area. One trip of note was the Washington, D.C. area, where she managed to snag Buzz Aldrin’s autograph at a D.C. book signing during a tour of the Air and Space Museum. When she finishes her master’s degree in May 2012, Rabenburg hopes to go back to work for NASA in one of Langley’s materials centers.

After spending the summer working for NASA’s Langley Research Center, Trevor Engman , a junior majoring in physics and materials science and engineering, is very excited to be headed back to Virginia in early November to attend TEDx NASA – an event he helped put together.

Forsberg worked with microcontrollers, low-cost electronics, and developed navigation control software for aerial vehicles, including multiple vehicles operating autonomously. His team's final presentation in a Langley theatre involved a live demonstration of the system for a large group of students and NASA researchers. It was so successful that the NASA Edge web channel filmed a second demonstration a few days later, which is currently airing on iTunes and the NASA website. With the help of mentor Garry Qualls, the NASA engineer who helped design the ARES plane, Forsberg said he and the other students developed a very strong passion for what they wanted to accomplish during the summer. “Everything came together at a rapid pace. Qualls would give us a problem and a few suggestions for how to solve it and then, like a professor, just step back and let us go for it,” Forsberg said. "I felt like I had an academic mentor giving me problems beyond the classroom. Qualls had a vision for a research lab for autonomous vehicles at NASA, and I'm so thankful I got to be a part of its first steps.” Forsberg will finish his undergraduate degree in December and hopes to spend the spring semester back at Langley working on the project. He wants to make the setup more robust and also focus on vehicle collision avoidance software. He plans to attend graduate school in the fall.

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College of Engineering Newsletter | Fall 2010

Ellen

TED (originally for technology, entertainment and design) is a global set of conferences held annually since 1984 to promote “ideas that are worth spreading.” Topics are diverse and potentially groundbreaking, speakers are by invitation only, and each speaker gets a maximum of 18 minutes to share some pretty complex ideas. The TEDx events are organized by schools, businesses, libraries and other entities like NASA to host similar events.

Trevor

Even before his NASA internship, Engman was a huge TED fan and watched the presenters on the web faithfully. “I was such an avid TED follower and I got lucky to be paired with a mentor who organized the first NASA TEDx event the previous year,” he said. “I was part of a team of four or five NASA administrators who met weekly to put this event together. “ Engman also conducted research about creativity and innovation at Langley. He interviewed dozens of NASA employees about how they were taking an idea and turning it into something productive. He admits the research was very hard to quantify when it came time to write his final report but credits his time spent on the autonomous vehicle team with fellow Boise State intern Jake Forsberg for helping form his results.

“I was able to observe how they worked with new ideas and to see what kind of environment was very conducive to creative thoughts,” he said. Explaining his final conclusion, Engman says, “Autonomy is one of the most important things necessary for creativity to occur.”

College of Engineering Newsletter | Fall 2010

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