RESEARCH

Dr. Cato T. Laurencin is the 2021 recipient of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Hoover Medal. (Peter Morenus/UConn Photo)

NAACP to Present Prestigious Spingarn Medal to UConn’s Dr. Cato T. Laurencin at 112th Annual Convention

Laurencin joins such previous Springarn recipients as Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, George Washington Carver, and more

Professor Cato T. Laurencin of the University of Connecticut is the 2021 recipient of the prestigious Spingarn Medal, the highest honor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

“This is the most iconic award of the NAACP,” says Laurencin, who serves as the University Professor and Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Endowed Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UConn.

“I am so blessed and honored to receive this amazing recognition, and join the historic ranks of my fellow Spingarn Medal honorees that began its legacy 106 years ago,” says Laurencin, also of UConn School of Medicine.

Laurencin is the first engineer to receive the Spingarn medal honor, the fourth physician, and the fifth scientist. Some of the past Spingarn Medal winners include George Washington Carver, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Duke Ellington, Charles Drew, and Maya Angelou.

Named after the late J.E. Spingarn–then NAACP Chairman of the Board of Directors–this gold medal, awarded annually since 1915, honors “the man or woman of African descent and American citizenship who shall have made the highest achievement during the preceding year or years in any honorable field.” The award is intended both to draw the attention of the general public to African American achievement and to inspire young African Americans.

Laurencin’s seminal and singular accomplishments in tissue regeneration, biomaterials science, and nanotechnology, and regenerative engineering, a field he founded, have made him the foremost engineer-physician-scientist in the world. His breakthrough achievements have resulted in transformative advances in improving human life. His fundamental contributions to materials science and engineering include the introduction of nanotechnology into the biomaterials field for regeneration.

“Dr. Laurencin’s contribution to furthering humanity’s collective achievement in the field of science and engineering is extraordinary,” says Derrick Johnson, president and CEO, NAACP. “As a pioneer of the new field, regenerative engineering, he is shaping the landscape of cell-based therapy, gene therapy, and immunomodulation. Named as one of the 100 Engineers of the Modern Era by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, he has received countless awards for his transformative work. The NAACP is proud to present Dr. Laurencin with our highest recognition and join the chorus of those that realize what his work means globally.”

Laurencin is the first surgeon in history to be elected to all four national academies: the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Inventors. He is the first person in history to receive the oldest/highest award of the National Academy of Medicine (the Walsh McDermott Medal) and the oldest/highest award of the National Academy of Engineering (the Simon Ramo Founder’s Award). In science, he received the Philip Hauge Abelson Prize given “for signal contributions to the advancement of science in the United States.” In technology and inventorship, Laurencin is a laureate of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, America’s highest honor for technological achievement, awarded by President Barack Obama at the White House.

Laurencin received his BSE in chemical engineering from Princeton University, his MD, magna cum laude from the Harvard Medical School, and his Ph.D. in biochemical engineering/biotechnology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the CEO of The Connecticut Convergence Institute for Translation in Regenerative Engineering.

As the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, the NAACP remains a fixture in fighting for civil rights and social justice for all. Through its annual awards, it highlights the achievements of individuals and our branches, trailblazers who are actively on the front lines driving progress in business, law, education, and other sectors. In honoring their work and commitment, the NAACP aims to further the legacy of its organization, while championing future generations of civil rights leaders.

UConn Today, Jennifer Walker

National Academy of Sciences Elects Two More UConn Scientists

Dr. Laurinda A. Jaffe and Dr. Cato T. Laurencin are recognized for their research excellence and achievements.

The University of Connecticut and its UConn School of Medicine are proud to report the election of two more of its top scientists to the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Laurinda A. Jaffe, Ph.D. and Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D. were both elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

This year’s historic 120-member NAS class is, for the first time, half women and includes a new height of nine newly elected Black scientists. According to NAS, just a decade ago, women made up around only a quarter of the class and there had never been more than three Black scientists elected.

Jaffe is professor and chair of the Department of Cell Biology at UConn School of Medicine. Her pioneering National Institutes of Health funded research has revealed several major advances in the scientific understanding of fertility. Her research has identified physiological mechanisms that control young ovarian cells called oocytes and their communication patterns with other cells. Jaffe is widely credited for uncovering developmental processes that produce a fertilization-competent oocyte, which initiates embryonic development upon fertilization. A specific discovery was that following fertilization, a change in electrical voltage across an egg’s surface renders it refractory to fusion with additional sperm.

Laurencin’s election to the NAS makes him the first surgeon in history to be elected to all three national academies of NAS, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Academy of Medicine. As founder of the field of regenerative engineering, his NIH-funded research focuses on the convergence of advanced materials science including nanotechnology, biophysics, medicine, and developmental biology. A pioneer in polymeric materials science for musculoskeletal systems, his research successes include the regeneration of complex tissues.

“National Academy of Sciences membership is the highest honor a scientist can be awarded,” says Dr. Bruce T. Liang, the dean of UConn School of Medicine. “Congratulations to Dr. Jaffe and Dr. Laurencin for their research excellence, their amazing accolades, and their leadership on the national stage for the University and our medical school.”

The School of Medicine’s three NAS members are now Jaffe, Laurencin, and Se-Jin Lee, M.D., Ph.D., the Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences. Lee holds a joint faculty appointment with The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine. He was elected in 2012 for his research contributions in the field of medical physiology and metabolism.

The NAS was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and with the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine it provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.

NAS membership totals only 2,461 members and 511 international members, of which approximately 190 have received Nobel prizes. Members include experts from six disciplines of physical and mathematical sciences, biological sciences, engineering and applied sciences, biomedical sciences, behavioral and social sciences, and applied biological, agricultural, and environmental sciences.

Based on: UConn Today, Lauren Woods

Professor Dongare Discusses Developments as part of ‘CREDDS’ and the UTC Professorship

Professor Dongare reflects on a decade of success with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Professor Avinash Dongare joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at the University of Connecticut in 2012, almost a decade ago. Over these years, he has transitioned from an Assistant to an Associate Professor, been appointed to prestigious positions, expanded his research group, and collaborated with various institutions and organizations. Dongare has witnessed many changes in this past decade as part of the growth of the MSE Department. “MSE was a program in a joint department when I joined in 2012. Within a few months, the MSE department formed and has been accelerating ever since. Unfortunately, so did my receding hairline,” reflects Avinash.

Notably, the department has grown in the number of faculty, adding to the research diversity in materials at UConn. Dongare mentions that the MSE Department is “a young and dynamic department that provides creative and novel research platforms to many researchers, students and collaborators across the country. This growth reflects the excellent leadership and guidance of Professor Pamir Alpay, previous Department Head; Professor Bryan Huey, the current Department Head; Professor Steve Suib, the Director of the Institute of Materials Science; and Dean Kazem Kazerounian of the School of Engineering. Of course, the contributions of the staff and the students of the department form the foundations of the success.”

Over the years, Dongare’s innovative research has received recognition nationwide. He has expanded his research portfolio, increased the number of members of his research team, and taken new leadership roles. After receiving his tenure and being promoted to Associate Professor in 2018, Dongare’s recent success story includes the Center for Research Excellence on Dynamically Deformed Solids (CREDDS) funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA). CREDDS is one of four new Centers of Excellence at universities across the nation and receiving 12.5 million dollars over five years. Dongare serves as one of the four principal investigators as UConn partners with Texas A & M University (lead), University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

“Our focus at UConn is to understand the role of interfaces in structural multiphase metallic materials when subjected to extremes of shock and high strain rate deformation,” Dongare says. This development aims to revolutionize such materials, fabricated using advanced manufacturing methods. “Computational methods which can explore the phase space of materials and their responses in extreme environments allow us to run numerous virtual experiments at a fraction of the cost, letting us especially focus on new materials development and design,” Dongare adds.

CREDDS research has led to several new developments in Dongare’s research group, the “Computational Materials and Mechanics Group” (CMMG). Postdoctoral researcher Avanish Mishra and graduate student Marco Echeverria are the researchers from his team involved in CREDDS. They run virtual experiments of shock deformation of metallic materials and use simulated diffraction patterns and misorientation maps to characterize defect structures equivalent to experimental measurements. Such atomic-scale simulations, and the virtually generated diffractograms and maps, complement the interpretation of experimental in situ characterization of deformation modes (slip, twinning, phase transformation) under

shock loading conditions performed by CREDDS collaborators and scientists at several Department of Energy national labs. “This ability to compare the results of our simulations with experiments, for the same microstructures and under identical extreme conditions, is critical for the validation of the computational methods that exist today to guide the experiments of tomorrow,” Dongare says.

Also in 2018, the School of Engineering named Dongare as the United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Professor in Engineering Innovation. The professorship was established in 2000 to recognize exceptional achievements among young faculty exemplifying excellence in the impact of their research, teaching, and service contributions. This professorship provides a three-year funding award for professional development and growth. “The UTC professorship has enabled me to add certain flavors of research to my group over the past couple of years,” Dongare says. The funding award sponsored a Senior Design Project that used machine learning methods to identify layered materials for battery applications. The students ultimately won the first prize in the 2018-2019 Senior Design Competition. Continuing this research direction, graduate student Shayani Parida is currently working on a machine learning model to discover and design new layered materials for battery technologies. Dongare’s research group especially focuses on developing modeling capabilities that can be compared with those of experimental collaborators at UConn and nationwide. This often requires modeling the behavior of materials at the mesoscale, such as the quasi-coarse-grained dynamics (QCGD) developed by Dongare. Graduate students Garvit Agarwal, Sergey Galitskiy, Ke Ma, Sumit Suresh, and Ching Chen used the QCGD simulation method to understand material responses during shock deformation, laser-material interactions, and coldspray deposition, all at the length and time scales of real-world experiments. Dongare emphasizes the need for collaborations with researchers nationwide and especially at the national labs as a career development opportunity for the students. Dongare says, “We have active collaborations with several research groups in academia and at the US national labs. These collaborations have evolved over time and provide students excellent opportunities to publish with scientists and engineers from across the country. I try to make sure every member of my group gets such an experience, ideally as a summer intern or a visiting researcher at the labs. This helps give them exposure to opportunities for the future.”

Computational Materials and Mechanics Group Back: Marco Echeverria, Avanish Mishra, Sumit Suresh, and Avinash Dongare Front: Ching Chen, Shayani Parida, Sergey Galitskiy, and Ke Ma As to the pandemic crisis, Dongare mentions that it brought some unanticipated challenges but also opportunities. For example, throughout his career, Dongare embraced traditional classroom teaching—he enjoys deriving thermodynamic equations on the board, and more recently with an iPad. Department Head Bryan Huey notes that he regularly hears compliments about Avinash’s classes from undergraduate and graduate students, whether it be core classes like thermodynamics or more focused electives on modelling or mechanical properties.

Over this past year, Dongare ‘flipped’ his classes as part of the necessary transition to virtual teaching starting last March. Students watch recorded lectures in advance of class sessions, so that the time ‘together’ can be spent actively discussing course topics and problems instead. This helps to leverage the online format and encourage student discussion and participation. Interactions with his research group have also had to shift. “While we interact virtually all the time, the inability to be in the lab together or visit collaborators is difficult. Especially as a mostly-modelling group, though, we’re more used to it and it’s not really slowing down my hard-working students,” Dongare shares.

Looking ahead, the future is bright to Associate Professor Dongare. The MSE Department and the Institute of Materials Science have become a home. The growth in research capabilities and the research over the past decade have been especially exciting. Dongare reflects, “In my heart, I feel like I joined UConn just yesterday. However, when I see myself in the mirror and see the completely receded hairline, I realize a lot has changed. And while there is always a challenge related to establishing new directions, the interactions with my colleagues in MSE and IMS encourage me and help me every day. There is also an unparalleled sense of satisfaction in seeing my students graduating with a PhD and being successful in their own careers.”

The prototype solar tree is being assembled in the metal shop at the School of Fine Arts.

UConn's Solar Tree Will Offer Campus Visitors a Place to Recharge

An industrial design team is constructing a 12-foot, aluminum tree topped with nine large, leaf-shaped solar panels. The installation will be a research and education tool, and a place for campus visitors to plug in devices.

A solar tree is growing in an industrial design shop at the University of Connecticut, the inspired result of more than a year’s worth of collaboration by a multidisciplinary team of faculty and students.

The 12-foot aluminum tree will be used as a research and education tool, while also providing a place for students to stop and literally recharge.

Solar trees have been around for years, and typically consist of a pipe-like steel base supporting rectangular overhead panels. The UConn team, however, came up with a design that artfully mimics a real tree. Several slim limbs rise from the base and branch outward toward the top to support nine large leaf shapes that will hold the solar panels. The completed installation will include three curved benches at the tree’s base to provide a place for visitors to sit and plug in to one of the tree’s outlets.

“It’s an aesthetic object as much as a technical object,” said Christoper Sancomb, an assistant professor in the Industrial Design program in the School of Fine Arts and one of the project’s organizers.

The solar tree is the brainchild of Dr. Jasna Jankovic, an assistant professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and part of the Center for Clean Energy Engineering and Institute of Materials Science faculty. Jankovic said she first began discussing the idea with colleagues about two years ago. The concept immediately intrigued Dr. Cynthia Jones, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

“I told her it had always been a fantasy of mine to build an electrical plant and modify aspects, like leaf shape and positioning, to see how it influenced total electrical gain over the course of the day,” Jones said. In other words, the electrical plant could be used to gain a better understanding of photosynthesis.

Jankovich teamed up with Sancomb to apply for a UConn STEAM Innovation Grant to make the project happen. The grant program encourages innovative collaborations between the arts and STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). They also assembled a multidisciplinary team of faculty including Jones, Dr. Sung Yeul Park, an associate professor in electrical engineering, and Dr. Stacy Maddern, an assistant professor of urban and community studies. The rest of the crew consists of about a dozen students, including two high school students.

“We all deliberately sought out an opportunity to work with people outside of our fields,” Sancomb said. “There’s value in learning from each other — it sparks new ideas.”

As they set about planning the tree, the group started by asking, what

The final solar tree design will include three curved benches at the bottom of the tree where visitors can sit.

would separate this solar tree from the others out there? They talked about creating a public sculpture that people could plug into, a meeting place that would also provide shade and seating. They saw the tree as an opportunity to educate people about solar, perhaps with a solar-powered kiosk with an interactive presentation about the tree.

They wanted to make it as “green” as possible. So they decided to use recyclable aluminum, and ruled out the use of any plastics.

And, they wanted to make it portable. So although the tree will weigh around 600 pounds, it comes apart easily. The benches will contain ballast to anchor the tree to the ground in its temporary locations.

Sancomb, who has an extensive background in creating museum exhibits, is overseeing the tree’s construction. The metal parts of the tree have been assembled, but it awaits wiring, attachment of the solar panels, painting, the benches and batteries to store power for nighttime lighting. The nine 50-watt flexible solar panels (and two extras), along with two batteries, were donated by Renogy, a California maker of DIY-friendly renewable energy products designed for a variety of applications.

Meanwhile, students on the team are beginning work on a variety of “microprojects.” For example, Pablo Zarama, 20, a materials science and engineering major, said he is creating sensors that he hopes will measure the optimal angles for the leaf panels to maximize generation.

Vuk Jankovic, 18, a psychology major, said he will use the tree as the focus of a study on different styles of learning. Subjects will see a presentation about the tree in an in-class setting, a remote setting or through virtual reality technology. Jankovic will then test the subjects to see how well they retained the knowledge.

And Dar Jankovic, 16, said he wants to test whether using concave-shaped leaves with a smaller solar panel on one end and a mirror to reflect sunlight on the other will maximize efficiency.

“We want to branch out to multiple projects,” Jasna Jankovic said. “We will continue to encourage students and faculty to come up with their own projects.”

As it turns out, this tree is not suitable for the kind of research Jones was interested in.

“The leaves ended up being larger than I thought initially they would be,” she said. “We could still do some of that work if we build a second tree that might be smaller and has more flexibility for adjusting things for experimental uses.” And that’s certainly possible. This tree was meant to be a prototype to test a number of factors, Jankovic said, and “we will apply to the National Science Foundation or another granting agency for a bigger grant to develop this project further.” Sancomb estimates the cost of replicating the prototype tree at somewhere between $6,000 and $10,000; he won’t have a more exact figure until the project is finished.

Before the tree can make it's debut this fall or winter, Sancomb said they have another challenge to meet: coming up with a system of deterrents to keep students from climbing it.

Source: Energy News Network, Lisa Prevost

Jasna Jankovic Receives the Prestigious NSF CAREER Award

Assistant Professor Jasna Jankovic with her graduate and undergraduate students in the Center for Clean Energy Engineering

Two years after joining the UConn MSE department, Assistant Professor Jasna Jankovic has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The award will provide funding over five years, allowing Jankovic to advance her research on clean energy technologies, as well as to develop educational programs designed to reach out to young audiences. “Earning the prestigious faculty early career development (CAREER) award gives me the means to realize what I envision as novel and transformative research, and helps me to inspire new generations to study and work in STEM fields and clean energy,” she says. Jankovic’s research focuses on developing novel analytical techniques for characterizing degradation mechanisms in fuel cells, which she will also extend to electrolyzers and batteries. Specifically, her work investigates degradation occurring in tiny fuel cell membrane electrode assemblies that mimic industrial fuel cells. Identical