2022 Swanson School of Engineering Annual Report

ANNUAL REPORT

Greetings from Interim U.S. Steel Dean Sanjeev G. Shroff

I am honored to serve as the Interim U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering, and it has been a privilege working with and learning from the Pitt community to better understand the School and the University since my appointment in August 2022. I am excited to share my first School Annual Report with you and provide an update on the state of the School, lessons learned, and plans for the future.

The state of the Swanson School of Engineering is strong. As a premier educational institution, our students continue to excel in their academic endeavors and are increasingly more involved in their own education. We are consistently meeting first-year matriculation goals every year. PhD enrollment continues to grow ~4 percent/year, with an all-time high enrollment of 533 PhD students in fall 2022.

As an R1 institution, our faculty continue to grow our research efforts and outputs, with 516 proposals submitted in FY22 (40.2 percent increase from FY19) and $114.6M in research expenses in FY22 (23.2 percent increase from FY19). We have increasingly focused on community engagement activities and ensuring that our research efforts have positive societal impact. Finally, we have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic as a more nimble, holistic, and forward-thinking entity.

However, like many schools and universities, we face challenges. First-year-to-sophomore retention is a concern as both high school and undergraduate students struggled to adapt to a virtual learning environment, then back again to in-person classes. Further, since the pandemic we have seen significant changes in characteristics related to student academic preparation, motivation, and mental health – it is likely that the decrease in first-year-to-sophomore retention is related to this

phenomenon. Finally, our master’s enrollment has declined by 28.3 percent from fall 2019 to fall 2022. After discussions with school faculty, students, and staff as well as others in the University, we have identified five priorities to address these challenges:

First, we need to focus on student preparation, motivation, and mental health. Specific efforts are underway to address these issues. Additionally, we must continue to encourage students, particularly undergraduate students, to be more active participants in their own education – encouraging them to be not just passive learners, but to take the wheel for more holistic and experiential learning.

Second, we need to promote an academic and research curriculum that strengthens engineering skills of our graduates, makes them more in demand to employers, and responds to global workforce needs. Efforts are underway to develop new undergraduate degrees and certificates and create focused master’s programs with stackable certificates to address falling master’s enrollment.

Third, we must continue to focus on our research efforts and identity. We have selected biomedicaland energy-related research as the two primary focus areas. We also continue to grow our research in related areas and enabling technologies such as advanced manufacturing, design and characterization of novel materials, modeling/ simulations and computations, and distributed sensors and data analytics. Finally, sustainability considerations are integrated in all our research and educational efforts.

Fourth, we understand that we need to be more proactive in engaging with industry and the community. Our inaugural director for career and industry engagement has been working diligently to identify new partnerships and expand current collaborations, both on the research and educational fronts.

Lastly, we need to expand our philanthropic efforts and identify new funding resources for scholarships, named fellowships and professorships, and new and existing programmatic activities. We also need to invest in our faculty and staff to help them develop pathways for growth and discover opportunities to advance.

Accomplishing these tasks will be challenging, but I am certain that, with the help of our faculty, students, and staff and our many alumni and friends, we will be successful. My door is always open, and I welcome your ideas, feedback, and insight.

Hail to Pitt!

The Mysterious Mechanics of Morphogenesis

Pitt Bioengineer Lance Davidson Receives $2.2M MERIT Award from NIH to Continue Study of Embryo Organ Development

Tissue engineering – creating a “seed” of tissue that could grow into a functional, life-saving organ – sounds like magic. But it could become technology, thanks in part to the work led by Lance Davidson, William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering.

Davidson’s MechMorpho lab works at the interface of physics and biology to understand both biological and physical principles of morphogenesis: the development of embryonic form in the frog embryo. Their research not only lays the groundwork to better understand human cell and tissue development but also has implications for furthering tissue engineering, preventing birth defects, and understanding the effect of tissue mechanics on cancer cell growth and proliferation. The National Institutes of Health awarded Davidson a MERIT (Method to Extend Research in Time) Award of $2.2 million to carry out this work.

“We’re trying to understand, from a physical perspective, how organisms and their organs form,” said Davidson. “Development is commonly viewed as a cascade of biochemical reactions that “magically” generate the body and organs of the embryo. Our group seeks to open that magic black box and understand how physical processes convert those reactions into work and living structures.”

The MERIT award is a highly prestigious award provided by the NIH to only the most outstanding scientists. The five-year grant –with an opportunity to renew for another five years, based on progress made in the first five years – allows recipients to focus more on their research and less on the need to continually seek renewed funding.

“Lance’s research on how cellular biomechanics contributes to the development of organisms at the cellular and tissue levels has wide-

ranging implications for human health,” said Mark Redfern, professor and interim chair of bioengineering. “This MERIT award is recognition by NIH of the importance of this work and the potential for new breakthroughs in the future. The very competitive award is well-deserved.”

The MechMorpho Lab’s long-term goal is to reverse-engineer the embryo and organ formation.

“There are a diverse set of chemical and physical pathways that regulate morphogenesis and that interact with the environment. In this project we want to understand how passive mechanics and active forces shape tissues in an early vertebrate embryo,” said Davidson. “We aim to understand the coupling between cell biological and physical mechanisms that drive cell shape changes, control cell behaviors, generate forces, and create tissue properties like stiffness.”

Embryonic Engineering

Convergent extension – the process by which an embryo elongates from a simple clump of cells and begins to take on the shape of its eventual body – is crucial to a vertebrate’s development. If the convergent extension process goes wrong, it often leads to developmental defects in organs and overall anatomy.

Understanding the mechanical basis of this process is a central question in developmental biology. It gives fresh insights into the fundamental principles of organ development and how a tissue assembles itself as it grows and regenerates.

To study this process, Davidson’s lab relies on frog embryos before they are recognizable as tadpoles. Frogs share a surprising amount of DNA with humans but develop much

more quickly. In previous work, Davidson and his team were able to characterize the dynamics of key mechanical properties and the proteins involved in morphogenesis. They used confocal microscopy to observe protein complexes within living cells in an embryo on a sub-micron scale, finding that events happening on this microscopic level have a major impact on large-scale events.

Mechanical Memory

Organ growth can follow mechanical clues from their environment, but researchers don’t yet know how those clues are stored or how they dissipate. At the intersection of developmental biology and bioengineering, Davidson is in a unique position to understand these important processes.

In this project, the team will dig deeper and understand how tissues store mechanical information.

“If genes are interacting with mechanics, the mechanics have to be able to hang around in a way that can be sensed by genetic pathways,” explained Davidson. “If mechanical stresses dissipate quickly, it is like a mechanical form of amnesia with cells forgetting their past and possibly resetting their biological processes to an earlier state.”

Reverse engineering organ and tissue development will be a great advance in tissue engineering, but it can also lead to medical interventions to better diagnoses and treatment.

“A great number of human diseases are associated with defects in mechanical signaling

pathways,” explained Davidson. “Cardiovascular disease, for example, is thought to be triggered by defects in how cells interact with blood flow.”

The spread of cancer is also clearly dependent on mechanics, Davidson said, as cells are triggered to migrate out of a tumor by the mechanical microenvironment that surrounds them. “If you can modulate the environment around a tumor, and keep it in a softer state, the cells might just stay put,” he said.

This knowledge will give researchers a better basis to understand birth defects and their risk factors. For example, in spina bifida there are genetic risk factors but the mechanisms that cause them to manifest are unknown. If there is a clear mechanical element to the risk, future research could identify ways to offset this risk with medication.

“Our work opens the door for researchers to develop new hypotheses of morphogenesis and bioengineering tools to test them,” said Davidson. “With a better understanding of the role of mechanics in development, we can understand so much more about the human body and how we can overcome some of its most significant ailments.”

The MERIT award is a highly prestigious award provided by the NIH to only the most outstanding scientists

Mark Redfern Appointed Interim Chair of Bioengineering

Following the appointment of former Department Chair Sanjeev G. Shroff to Interim U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering, Professor Mark Redfern was named Interim Chair of Bioengineering. Previously Redfern had served as the Swanson School’s Associate Dean for Research (20082012) and Pitt’s Vice Provost for Research (2012-2017).

Redfern, who earned his PhD in bioengineering from the University of Michigan, began his Pitt career in 1988 as Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology in the School of Medicine, with appointments in Physical Therapy, Industrial Engineering, and Rehabilitation Science. He was among the pioneering faculty who helped to establish the Department of Bioengineering at Pitt in 1998, and as its inaugural Undergraduate Coordinator, he helped develop the undergraduate program’s curriculum.

Redfern is nationally and internationally known and respected for his research in the biodynamics of human movement and human factors engineering and leads the Human Movement and Balance Laboratory (HMBL). One of his long-standing research interests is postural control and the rehabilitation of patients with balance disorders. By taking an engineering systems approach to modeling and understanding how various pathologies affect patients, Redfern and his colleagues at HMBL investigate interventions that can improve diagnosis and treatment. The influence of aging on balance control and the prevention of falls is of particular interest, with his longstanding NIH-funded work investigating sensory integration processes that underlie a person’s ability to maintain balance when standing and walking.

Improving Vascular Graft Integration into the Body

A graft can be a life-saving device for coronary heart disease, which remains the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. However, at small diameters − such as the coronary artery in the heart – long-term graft failure rates are often higher than 40 percent.

A major cause of graft failure in coronary artery bypass surgery is compliance mismatch between the graft and the native vessel, which can lead to an accumulation of cells and blockages.

A multidisciplinary research team at the Swanson School of Engineering seeks to improve long-term graft functionality through a $2,664,522 award from the National Institutes of Health.

“The goal of this project is not to make a compliance-matched vascular graft; we have already done that,” said Jonathan Vande Geest, professor of bioengineering at Pitt and lead researcher on the project. “We are aiming to make a fully biodegradable small-diameter tissue-engineered vascular graft (TEVG) and keep it compliance-matched as it degrades and remodels.”

Vande Geest uses computational tools to develop TEVGs that are fine-tuned to match the implanted target; however, this development only addresses one of the challenges associated with these devices. TEVGs are often rejected by the body because they do not resemble a native artery, which is the obstacle the research team will tackle.

“The attractive part of a biodegradable graft is that you are allowing the host to direct the remodeling process,” Vande Geest explained. “We will optimize the TEVG before it is implanted, but we want the host to integrate and remodel it and, as such, improve its long-term functional performance.

National Academy of Engineering Names University of Pittsburgh’s Anna C. Balazs as New Member

Less than a year after being elected to the National Academy of Sciences, Distinguished Professor Anna Balazs was named as one of the newest members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The Academy accepted Balazs’ membership “in recognition of distinguished contributions to engineering and for creative and imaginative work in predicting the behavior of soft materials that are composed of multiple cooperatively –interacting components.”

She is the first faculty member at Pitt to hold membership in both the Engineering and Science academies. Balazs and the 111 new members and 22 international members announced by NAE President John L. Anderson were inducted at the NAE Annual Meeting October 2-3 in Washington, DC.

Balazs’ research focuses on “biomimicry” and the theoretical and computational modeling of polymers. An internationally acclaimed expert in the field, her many accolades also include the first woman to receive the prestigious Polymer Physics Prize from the American Physical Society in 2016. She is also the

John A. Swanson Chair of Engineering in the Swanson School’s Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering,

“This has been a tremendous year for Anna and long-due recognition of her outstanding career in engineering and chemistry,” noted Steven R. Little, Department Chair and Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering. “Her continued impact in this singular field represents the foundation for soft robotics, advanced materials, and a new interpretation of polymer chemistry. Most importantly, Anna is also a remarkable teacher, mentor, and colleague, especially to our young faculty. All of us share in her excitement today and share a sense of pride in her lifetime accomplishments.”

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.”

Balazs is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Materials Research Society, and received some of the leading awards in her field, including the Royal Society of Chemistry S F Boys – A Rahman Award (2015), the American Chemical Society Langmuir Lecture Award (2014), and the Mines Medal from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (2013).

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer

A Step Toward Decarbonizing the Chemical Industry

Around the globe, countries including the U.S. have pledged their support to carbon neutrality by 2050. Despite slight improvements in recent years, the chemical industry is still among the industries with the largest carbon footprint; developing technology to make the chemical industry carbon neutral is key to meeting this goal.

Shrinking that footprint, however, is difficult: decarbonization requires a significant amount of time, effort and – most importantly – new technological advancements to change the way chemical plants operate.

University of Pittsburgh engineers are leading a multi-site team that received $3.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop the necessary scientific foundation for carbon-neutral hydrogen technologies to take hold in the chemical industry. Pitt is among the

54 universities and 11 national labs to receive this DOE funding to research clean energy technologies and low-carbon manufacturing.  “It’s difficult to decarbonize the chemical industry because it was built up in a world that relies heavily on fossil resources, both as fuel and as the raw material for chemical manufacturing. To operate without relying on fossil fuels, these very sophisticated plants would have to be fully redesigned,” explained James McKone, associate professor of chemical engineering who leads this work at Pitt along with Associate Professor Giannis Mpourmpakis. “The goal of our project is to understand the fundamental physics and chemistry of protoncoupled electron transfer, which can provide a foundation for new carbon-neutral hydrogen technologies.”

ChemE Student Benjamin Hudock Can’t Stop Learning

Benjamin Hudock lives a secret life.

He attends his engineering classes like any other student, but he also brings books with whatever he’s fascinated with at the time – from Russian literature to calligraphy to the agriculture industry in South America. Hudock has never been concerned about breaking from the norm of the crowd he’s with; he’s focused only on the next challenge he plans to master.

His dedication to learning unconventional subjects outside of engineering has paid off. Hudock, a rising senior studying chemical engineering who is also receiving a certificate in Latin American studies, was announced as one of nine Pitt students named Fulbright Scholars in 2022.The U.S. Fulbright Program grants selected students the opportunity to teach English abroad. Hudock will be headed to Brazil for the program and is one of nine Swanson School students to have earned the honor in the past decade.

“Benjamin is an exemplary Fulbright recipient,” Lesha Greene, the director of national scholarships at the David C. Frederick Honors College, said. “His genuine love of Brazilian

culture as well as his experiences surrounding language learning makes him a great fit.”

Hudock is still integrating his passion for languages and his commitment to engineering. He is part of Engineers Without Borders in Nicaragua and Ecuador and is usually the point person to translate meetings between engineering professionals over Zoom. Hudock said his expanding communication skills are helping him bridge the divide between engineering and learning languages.

“I can go into a chemical plant and sit down and chat with an operator who just has a completely different background than me but I find we can relate over something. I kind of just built up this huge base as someone who is broadly interested in many different things.”

Hudock had integrated what he’s learned in the engineering classroom to studying foreign languages. Over that journey, he said he’s learned the importance of reading above all to build on his growing interests.

“Reading is what unlocks the door for you,” Hudock said. “There’s no substitute for me than just books, books, books.”

Reading is what unlocks the door for you

Road Bed as Test Bed

Pitt, Pa. Turnpike Team Up to Make Mon-Fayette Expressway a Test Bed for Innovative Construction

When construction begins next year on the Mon-Fayette Expressway between Jefferson Hills and Duquesne, the new roadway will provide more than a new travel connection for residents of the Monongahela Valley.

The new toll road also will serve as a test bed for innovative transportation construction techniques that could use noise reduction walls to reduce pollution and produce electricity from traffic-generated road vibrations for road signs, among other things.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, which is building the toll road first discussed in the 1960s, approved a $2.7 million agreement with the University of Pittsburgh for a series of pilot projects during highway construction. Turnpike engineers have been working since 2021 with the Impactful Resilient Infrastructure Science and Engineering consortium based at the Swanson School on Engineering to select the projects.

“We were looking for something that’s actually doable and not some pie-in-the-sky kind of thing,” said Julie Marie Vandenbossche, professor of civil engineering and former head of the consortium. “This is the largest thing we’ve done through IRISE.”

The turnpike has been part of IRISE since it formed in 2016 as a collaboration between the engineering school, construction firms and government transportation agencies, said Ed Skorpinski, an engineer project manager for the turnpike. After watching the group work on smaller projects such as how to reduce and respond to landslides, the agency decided to use the group to design and test innovations.

“We thought [building the expressway] could be a unique test bed,” Skorpinski said.

The plan is to test ideas – many of which haven’t been tried before – during construction of the expressway and decide whether they produce positive results for a reasonable price. If so, they can be included in future projects, Skorpinski said.

The turnpike advertised for bids for the first section of the toll road before the end of 2022, while the test specifications are still being developed, so pilots likely will be included in later segments of the project. The southern leg of the highway, which will be built sequentially from Jefferson Hills north with more than a half dozen construction contracts, is expected to be finished by 2028.

The four pilot projects will be:

• Redesigning noise walls using a hollow, honeycomb-like material to reduce sound and treating it with a catalyst that will capture nitrogen oxides generated by vehicles with combustion engines. The process will convert the pollutants into harmless nitrates that will dissipate naturally, similar to a car’s catalytic converter.

Sound barriers will be included toward the northern end of construction, so their exact locations haven’t been determined yet.

Skorpinski said the pilot will determine how effective the system is at reducing pollution.

“It could have a good benefit in the future,” he said.

• Using the natural vibrations that vehicles cause on road surfaces to generate electricity for road signs. Researchers will test whether the sensors to capture vibrations work better with asphalt or concrete surfaces before they choose a location to try the system, which also would use recycled plastic.

The pilot will test the concept in small sections but if it works it could be used on longer stretches of the highway, Skorpinski said.

• Creating a digital, three-dimensional model of a one-mile section of the highway as it is being built. The model will be used to simulate and monitor the wear and tear on the road over the years.

“It will definitely help to alert us to when problems are developing,” Skorpinski said.  “It won’t slow down what is happening. It will help to let us know when we should be paying attention.”

• Testing which method works best for recharging electric vehicles as they drive over the road surface. The process involves putting charging elements just under the surface that are activated when electric vehicles drive over them and recharge their batteries as they drive.

This trial likely would be part of the construction of the northern section of the highway, from Duquesne to Monroeville, which isn’t expected to begin until 2030 or later. The turnpike already is working with the Advancing Sustainability through Powered Infrastructure for Roadway Electrification program at Utah State and the Ohio Turnpike to develop a demonstration project on roadway electrification at the Pennsylvania-Ohio border over the next five years.

IRISE Director Joe Szczur called turnpike test projects “the basis of where the IRISE consortium is heading.”

“This is a good example of the kind of things we can do,” he said. “These are the things [road designers] need. That’s the reason IRISE was created.”

Or as Vandenbossche put it, “This is when research becomes fun.”

Skorpinski said trials are important for the turnpike, which manages more than 500 miles of roads across the state.

“This is stuff that hasn’t really been done in this region,” he said. “Hey, if we find out this is something that works, we would absolutely look to incorporate it throughout our system.”

The turnpike has been part of IRISE since it formed in 2016

Highway photos courtesy PA Turnpike. Lab photo courtesy IRISE.

Model Research

Alessandro Fascetti didn’t know his career as assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering would lead to him to become a certified industrial drone pilot, but that has become a regular part of his job.

Fascetti, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, is part of a team preparing a digital model and history of the construction of the new Fern Hollow Bridge. The project involves piloting a hexacopter drone for 11½ minutes every two weeks to record photo and laser images of the progress of construction, about 170 million pieces of information each week.

The project received a $141,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create the digital model, believed to be the first of its kind

Going with the Flow

Imagine a school of fish swimming through the open water. The way the water flows affects how the school of fish moves and how much energy the fish expend; however, their movement affects the way the water flows, too.

The interactions at play here are part of the field of fluid dynamics, which is critical to engineering

in the country. Fascetti’s team is following the emergency replacement of the bridge after the previous structure collapsed in January 2022.

Copyright Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2022, reprinted with permission.

solutions to direct wastewater, or to map and contain oceanic oil spills. Lei Fang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, received $361,476 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to model the effect of active matter on transport barriers that partition the flow domain into disconnected regions.

“Even though transport barriers are effective in understanding and controlling the transport of inactive material, that’s not the case for active matter,” explained Fang, who leads the Fang Research Group in the Swanson School of Engineering. “There is a critical need for a framework to model the interactions between active matter and transport barriers in the flow so that we can better understand the effect of overfishing on ocean currents, for example, or further develop drone technologies that can operate in swarms for environmental and urban monitoring.”

In order to build this framework, Fang will start on a smaller scale – much smaller.

Using a quasi-two-dimensional laboratory flow system, Fang will examine the effect of a group of brine shrimp – tiny zooplankton measuring less than a half-inch long – on transport barriers. He will use a light-guiding system to guide the brine shrimp through the system: a thin device filled with shallow water that produces chaotic and turbulent flows.

Windows that Outsmart the Elements

New Research Introduces Adaptable Smart Window Design that can Heat or Cool a House

Homeowners know that the type of windows in a house contribute to heating and cooling efficiency. And that’s a big deal – maintaining indoor temperatures consumes great amounts of energy and accounts for 20 to 40 percent of the national energy budgets in developed countries.

New research from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Oxford takes energy efficient windows a step further by proposing a new “smart window” design that would harvest the sun’s energy in the winter to warm the house and reflect it in the summer to keep it cool. The work was published in the journal ACS Photonics and funded as part of the EPSRC Wearable and Flexible Technologies Collaboration (WAFT).

“The major innovation is that these windows can change according to seasonal needs,” explained Nathan Youngblood, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Pitt and first author. “They absorb near infrared light from the sun in the winter and turn it into heat for the inside of a building. In the summer months, the sun can be reflected instead of absorbed.”

The film is made up of an optical stack of materials less than 300 nanometers thick, with a very thin active layer made of “phase change” materials that can absorb the invisible

wavelengths of the sun’s light and emit it as heat. That same material can be “switched” so that it turns those wavelengths of light away instead.

“Importantly, visible light is transmitted almost identically in both states, so you wouldn’t notice the change in the window,” Youngblood noted. “That aesthetic consideration is critical for the adoption of green technologies.”

The material could even be adjusted so that, for example, 30 percent of the material is turning away heat while 70 percent is absorbing and emitting it, allowing for more precise temperature control.

Harish Bhaskaran, professor at Oxford’s Materials Department, who led the research and heads the WAFT consortium said, “Here, we exploit tuning how invisible wavelengths are transmitted or reflected to modulate temperature. These ideas have come to fruition with the aid of our long-standing industrial collaborators, and are the result of long-term research.”

The researchers estimate that using these windows – including the energy required to

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Amorphous Crystalline

Windows that Outsmart the Elements...

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control the film – would save 20 to 34 percent in energy usage annually compared to doublepaned windows typically found in homes.

To create and test their prototypes, the researchers worked with Bodle Technologies, a company that specializes in ultra-thin reflective films that can function as displays by controlling color and light, as well as Eckersley O’Callaghan, a leading engineering and architectural firm, and Plasma App, a thin films company.

“This work demonstrates yet another interesting optoelectronic application of Phase Change Materials with the potential to significantly improve our everyday life,” said Peiman Hosseini, CEO of Bodle Technologies. “The commercialization of PCM-based tuneable low-e glass panels still has several significant challenges left to overcome; however, these preliminary results prove that the long developmental road ahead is certainly warranted. I believe this technology should be part of any future holistic policy approach tackling climate change.”

CASPR Celebrates One Year Aboard the ISS

CASPR – the Configurable and Autonomous Sensor Processing Research system – has been hard at work on the International Space Station (ISS).

The system of new space computers and sensors was created at the University of Pittsburgh’s NSF IUCRC Center for Space, High-performance, and Resilient Computing (SHREC). Since powering up in January 2022, it has been collecting data and imagery at low ground-resolved distances, meaning it can see fine details in each image. Roads and houses, even airplanes taxiing on an airport runway, are all visible with CASPR’s incredible high-resolution binocular telescope and space computing capabilities.

And the SHREC ground station isn’t in Houston or Florida, but rather headquartered in Schenley Place on Pitt’s Oakland campus.

“When you’re at the ground station, you have a window looking out over the entire planet in your office, and you get a little bit of what it’s like to see the earth from space,” said Evan Gretok, graduate student at Pitt and CASPR operations lead.

“This data, and these images – we’re theoretically the first people to see them,” added CASPR Project Manager Seth Roffe, also a graduate student at Pitt.

The space computing system will continue pushing boundaries for at least another year, as its stay aboard the ISS was recently extended through December 2023. After its work is finished, CASPR will be disconnected from the ISS and will hurdle toward earth, getting a closer look at the planet it surveyed before eventually burning up in its atmosphere.

Pitt Students Hone Engineering (and Life) Skills in Electric Boat Competition

Engineering students at University of Pittsburgh, until recently, were offered little hands-on experience with electric vehicles of any type. So last year, when then-junior Nick Genco saw an opportunity for a club at Pitt dedicated to racing electric boats in the Promoting Electric Propulsion (PEP) for Small Craft competition held by the American Society of Naval Engineers, he jumped in. That was the summer of 2021. The race was the following May. Plenty of time, right?

“I didn’t grow up boating. I played basketball in high school,” Genco says. “I really knew nothing about boating or the effects of getting on a plane or anything like that. As I got more into the actual boating aspects, I found out there was a lot to learn.”

Pittsburgh Electric Propulsion, the name chosen for the university sponsored student design team, now includes more than 40 undergraduates studying 10 different disciplines of engineering as well as finance, economics, marketing, computer science and business information systems. With the university still in Covid lockdowns, however, they couldn’t meet to actually build a boat until late October. For trim and displacement measurements, they carried their fully rigged 13-foot Zodiac Milpro ERB400 inflatable up infamous Cardiac Hill to the nearest warm water – Pitt’s indoor swimming pool.

Their electric motor, built into a 1968 Mercury Thunderbolt 500 outboard shell, went untested until race day. Even plagued with during-race repairs jury-rigged by the boat’s skipper, Luke Sowinski, the club’s Cathy – named for the

Cathedral of Learning building on campus – still managed 11 mph and third place in a fleet of seven entries competing on Pohick Bay, off the Potomac River outside of Washington D.C.

While funding remains challenging, Cathy seems to be right on track for June. As of this writing, Pitt Electric Propulsion recently partnered with hydroplane racer Thomas Schlarb to campaign 70 mph electric-powered C-Stock hydroplanes. The first race is in June. Plenty of time, right?

The full article appears in Boating magazine.

Robot

“Bugs”

that Can Go Just About Anywhere

Pitt Engineers Create Insect-Inspired Robots that can Monitor Hard-to-Reach Spots

These ancient creatures can squeeze through the tiniest cracks, fit snugly into tight spaces and survive in harsh environments: There aren’t many spaces that are off-limits to an insect. That’s why researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have created tiny bug-inspired robots that can carry out tasks in hard-to-reach spaces and inhospitable environments.

“These robots could be used to access confined areas for imaging or environmental evaluation, take water samples, or perform structural evaluations,” said Junfeng Gao, who led the work as a PhD student in industrial engineering. “Anywhere you want to access confined places – where a bug could go but a person could not – these machines could be useful.”

For many creatures under a certain size –like trap-jaw ants, mantis shrimp, and

fleas – jumping across a surface is more energy-efficient than crawling. Those impulsive movements were replicated in the robots, which are made of a polymeric artificial muscle.

“It’s akin to loading an arrow into a bow and shooting it – the robots latch on to build up energy and then release it in an impulsive burst to spring forward,” explained M. Ravi Shankar, professor of industrial engineering whose lab led the research. “Usually, actuation in the artificial muscles we work with is fairly slow. We were drawn to the question, ‘How do we take this artificial muscle and use it to generate a jumping actuation rather than slow actuation?’”

The answer lies in the interplay of molecular order and geometry.

“The curved composite shape of the polymer muscle allows it to build energy when it is powered. The way the molecules are aligned in the muscle draws inspiration from the natural world, where their combined actuation builds energy into the structure,” said Mohsen Tabrizi, co-author of the study and PhD student in industrial engineering at the Swanson School. “This is accomplished using no more than a few volts of electricity.”

The versatile movement and lightweight structure enables the robots – which are about the size of a cricket – to move along moving surfaces like sand as easily as hard surfaces, and even to hop across water.

Lisa Maillart Named Interim Chair of Industrial Engineering

As the Department of Industrial Engineering enters its second century at the University of Pittsburgh, its leadership is poised for new change and growth. Professor Lisa M. Maillart, PhD Student Recruitment Coordinator, will serve as Interim Department Chair.

A graduate of Virginia Tech (BS, MS) and University of Michigan (PhD), Maillart has been a faculty member in the department since 2006 following an appointment as assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University, and leads the Department’s Stochastic Modeling, Analysis and Control Laboratory. In 2017 she was selected as a Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar to the Netherlands and serves as vice president of the Greater Pittsburgh Area Chapter of the Fulbright Association. She has executed multiple faculty searches; refocused PhD recruitment within the

department; and served in officer positions in multiple INFORMS subdivisions.

In 2022 Maillart was accepted to Drexel University’s Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES at Drexel®) program, a one-of-a-kind professional development program for women in academic STEM fields.

Maillart’s research focuses on decisionmaking under uncertainty for medical decision making and healthcare applications, as well as maintenance operations. Her most recent funded research includes “Optimization of Milk Bank Operations” (W.K. Kellogg Foundation) and co-participant in “Clinical implications of drug shortages during COVID-19 in the U.S. and Canada” (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality).

10mm

Power

Introducing a new Engineering Data Analytics Undergraduate Certificate

Preparing Pitt Undergraduates for Industry 4.0

The world is awash in data. From personal devices like your cell phone to hospitalization records, supply chains, and navigation, data is collected, stored, transferred, sold, and translated. People who can manage, interpret, and utilize that data are among the most sought-after by employers. To meet the growing global demand for these professionals, the Department of Industrial Engineering program is introducing a new Engineering Data Analytics Undergraduate Certificate.

The curriculum will prepare students to advance engineering applications using the acquisition, management and analysis of data, including using new machine learning and artificial intelligence methods for manufacturing, materials, systems, and engineering. The certificate will be offered by the Swanson School of Engineering to any Pitt undergraduate.

“The curriculum is designed to provide students with fundamental knowledge and skills in statistics and programming applied to the acquisition, management and analysis of engineering data,” said Karen Bursic, professor

and undergraduate program director of industrial engineering. “This will allow our students to pursue careers in these areas that are critical to so many industries that want to be globally competitive.”

Data science skills are increasingly in-demand by employers, but according to a McKinsey Global Institute survey of companies, hiring top talent is the “biggest hurdle” to incorporating data analytics in their existing operations. Salaries for these positions pay an average of $105,000 for data scientists, $114,000 for machine learning skills, and $117,000 for data engineering jobs.

According to Paul Leu, associate professor of industrial engineering at Pitt, the Swanson School’s data analytics certificate will also better prepare students for the workforce in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0. This paradigm shift is focused on how the global production and supply network integrates connectivity, AI, robotics and other new technologies.

Going Heavy Metal

Tucked away in the subbasement of Pitt’s Benedum Hall, past the Panther Racing parts spilling into hallways, you’ll find a giant machine that looks like a cross between a car garage and the entry port of a sci-fi spaceship. It’s a state-of-the-art 3D printer for metal – the Gefertec arc605.

For producing big, specialized metal parts, the machine is unbeatable, said Albert To, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and an expert on 3D printing.

“Even on the order of tens of parts, this is very advantageous,” he said. “And if you want to include some complexity, then you can’t do it any other way than 3D printing.”

The printer makes use of welding, melting wire made from metals like stainless steel, titanium and aluminum alloys and depositing it layer by layer. Previous metal 3D printers in the lab using lasers and metal powder could lay down a few hundred grams an hour; this one is an order of magnitude faster.

That makes the Gefertec printer ideal for producing larger parts that would normally have to be casted and tooled, an expensive approach that’s often not practical for manufacturing small-batch, specialty pieces. One of To’s first projects, for instance, is to make a three-footlong bridge joint for the U.S. Army that’s no longer manufactured.

While the technology has been around for decades, only in the past several years has it become reliable enough to gain widespread

notice. “All of a sudden, there’s a very high interest in industry,” including in aerospace, nuclear power and oil and gas, To said.

The machine’s advanced software and “fiveaxis” capabilities where pieces can be rotated and tilted during printing means it can be used to create complex metal parts. But there are still plenty of kinks to work out. For instance, metals warp as they heat and cool, a process that To is using the new printer to study with funding from the U.S. Army and the Department of Energy.

Xavier Jimenez, a third-year PhD student in To’s lab, is developing a process to 3D print using a new type of high-strength aluminum that has potential applications in aerospace but tends to crack when welded.

“You have to tune all these different parameters to figure out what will produce the best-quality weld,” Jimenez said. “Every material behaves a little differently.”

Jimenez came to Pitt in part because he wanted to work with the Gefertec arc605, but COVID-19 threw a wrench in the gears, and the printer

took three years to make its way to Pitt. The machine is larger than some studio apartments, and when it did arrive it had to be dropped into the lab piece-by-piece via crane and then assembled.

Having made it through the installation, the team is now in the process of testing parameters for the 3D printing of different metals. By testing the approach for different metals, then using X-rays and testing material properties, they can start to model how the process affects a part – from visible warping to changes to the microscopic structure of the material.

Further out, To is collaborating with colleagues to create smart components where fiber-optic cables are embedded in 3D-printed metal parts to sense the temperature and deformation of the part.

“It was a lot of work to get all the pieces together to get the machine working,” Jimenez said. “We’re very happy that it’s here.”

– Patrick Monahan, photography by Aimee Obidzinski. Originally published in Pittwire

Getting It to Stick: Grabbing CO2 Out of the Air

Direct air capture may be key to saving Earth from the effects of climate change, but there is a catch: It’s hard to do.

Direct air capture (DAC) technologies are designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air, although there is still a lot of room for improvement in DAC materials. Other molecules in the air, especially water, are in much higher concentrations than carbon dioxide, or CO2 They compete, and ultimately, carbon dioxide isn’t caught – at least in high quantities.

“If materials are good at grabbing carbon dioxide, they’re usually good at grabbing multiple gases,” explained Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science. “It’s really hard to tune these materials to grab carbon dioxide but nothing else, and that’s what this research is focused on.”

Hornbostel is joined by co-investigators

Nathaniel Rosi, a Pitt chemistry professor with a secondary appointment in the Swanson School,

and Christopher E. Wilmer, associate professor of chemical and petroleum engineering and William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow. Janice Steckel, a research scientist at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and graduate students Paul Boone, Austin Lieber, and Yiwen He will also be working on the project. Together, they published a journal paper for the Royal Society of Chemistry about creating new metalorganic frameworks, or MOFs, designed to capture just carbon dioxide.

MOFs, a research focus in Wilmer’s lab, are highly regarded for their ability to utilize porous membranes to capture large volumes of gasses and can be designed via computational modeling rather than traditional trial-and-error.

The MOF would have a core-shell design, meaning carbon dioxide would be trapped in the core, while the shell is able to block other gasses, specifically water. The shell and the core would be made from different MOF materials, with the shell MOF designed to slow down water and the core MOF designed to bind CO2

Ones to Watch: Asher Hancock

Asher Hancock has been interested in flight for as long as he can remember.

But there was one moment when he knew he was hooked.

“I went to NASA’s Kennedy Space Flight Center, down in Florida. Standing underneath the Saturn V rocket they have there – it was an engineering marvel,” he said. “Since then, I knew I wanted to work on something related to space or flight.”

A 2022 graduate of Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering who majored in mechanical engineering with minors in computer science and mathematics, Hancock spent the past few years rocketing to new heights himself:

first with a 2021 Goldwater Scholarship and now a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation and one of the most prestigious awards available to students in the U.S. –a Churchill Scholarship.

The scholarship funds a year of study at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., supporting students in science, math, and engineering. Hancock, one of 18 awardees this year, is the fifth Pitt student to be honored by the Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States.

“The Churchill Scholarship is one of the most selective science scholarships in the country; it is aimed almost exclusively at emerging research scientists who are already on the

path to completing high-level doctoral research,” said Aidan Beatty, a scholar-mentor in the University Honors College who advised Hancock. “Asher is clearly on that kind of ambitious and upward-moving trajectory.”

In his research, Hancock is interested in developing better autonomous systems by combining two different fields: machine learning and control theory. He explains the latter field with the example of a car’s cruise control.

Asher is clearly on that kind of ambitious and upwardmoving trajectory.

Taking Inventory of a Sustainable Campus

Greenhouse Gas Inventory Shows Pitt’s Progress Toward Carbon Neutrality

Jessica Vaden has sifted through a lot of data in the past two years, poring over spreadsheets that were so packed with information that they struggled to load. Among the data is detailed information about every department at the University of Pittsburgh, including the kind of travel modes taken and even how much paper was used.

“Excel has become my best friend,” she joked.  Vaden is a third year PhD student in Melissa Bilec’s Built Environment and Sustainable Engineering Group and the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI). For the second year in a row, she has been tasked with completing Pitt’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory, an overview of Pitt’s greenhouse (GHG) emissions as it works toward carbon neutrality by 2037.

The GHG Inventory for Pitt’s 2020 fiscal year (FY20, tracking emissions from July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020), shows that Pitt is well on its way to meeting this goal: GHG emissions were reduced by 31.9 percent compared to FY08, the first year the inventory was completed, and reduced by 13.6 percent from FY19.  This work has been financially supported by MCSI and Pitt’s Office of Sustainability.

“Pitt’s now annual greenhouse gas inventorying process is incredibly important in helping the Carbon Commitment Committee and other University bodies evaluate how we’re reducing GHG emissions campus-wide – and plan for where we might need to focus more attention in going forward so we reach carbon neutrality for the Pittsburgh campus by 2037,” said Aurora Sharrard, director of sustainability at Pitt,

who noted that the FY19 Inventory was the springboard for the forthcoming Pitt Climate Action Plan.

“Working with graduate students like Jessica to collect and analyze the data is a strong part of the process; as the inner workings of the University are usually new to them, fresh eyes help ensure we have all the right information and newest approaches.”

According to the inventory, the Pittsburgh campus emitted 186,068 metric tons of carbon dioxide in FY20, with the largest decrease resulting from decreased commuting, travel, and study abroad during the pandemic. For this inventory, only 3.5 months of COVID-19 impacts were included, due to FY20 timing. Beyond COVID-19’s impacts, the FY20 report also showcases the effects of other University sustainability efforts.

“When we look at this year’s numbers compared with our 2008 baseline, we see a really big dropoff,” Vaden noted. “We’re on the right track.”

“My research group and I completed our first GHG inventory for FY08, not knowing how or if the University would use the data,” said Melissa Bilec, William Kepler Whiteford Professor and co-director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation. “Now, with FY20, we have completed six inventories, and the University is making strategic decisions and investments with this information to meet our 2037 climate goals of carbon neutrality.”

The largest source of Pitt’s GHG emissions is from its electricity use, accounting for 45.5 percent of emissions. However, in FY20, campuswide electricity usage decreased 6.5 percent despite adding 81,620 square feet to its campus footprint. Renewables accounted for 21 percent of this energy usage (up slightly from the previous year), which contributed to a 39 percent reduction in GHG emissions from electricity since FY08.

One change from previous years was using SIMAP’s Market-Based method to estimate Scope 2 GHG emissions, which is recommended for all higher education GHG inventories. In previous years, Pitt has used its custom fuel mix provided by its electric suppliers; FY20 marks the switch to the recommended method.

Another factor in this year’s reduction in GHG emissions is something that was once ubiquitous on a college campus: paper. Decreases in consumption and an ongoing shift to carbon neutral and recycled paper led to the lowest ever GHG emissions from paper use; it accounts for just 0.27 percent of total emissions.

“There’s still a lot of paper use at Pitt, but switching to paper that doesn’t count toward GHG emissions has made a huge impact,” said Vaden, who noted the increased use of carbon neutral TreeZero Paper made entirely of sugarcane waste fiber.

Unpacking the environmental impacts of paper usage isn’t exactly what Vaden imagined doing when she was pursuing her undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. But after gaining experience there working with environmental research as a Meyerhoff Scholar, Vaden met Melissa Bilec through Pitt STRIVE and decided to join her Pitt research group. She is currently pursuing a PhD in civil and environmental engineering.

“I feel honored to work with talented students, and especially grateful to work with Jessica Vaden on these last two reports,” noted Bilec. “Jessica has developed valuable skills while learning deeply about our institution.”

“I knew working in chemical engineering wasn’t a fit, because I’d rather be out in the field doing research than working in a lab,” said Vaden. “But if you asked me in undergrad what I’d be doing now, I would’ve thought I would be struggling. Instead, I’m so glad I’ve found this side of engineering.”

We’re on the right track

Validation After a Challenging Year

Pitt NSBE Chapter Wins Regional Chapter of the Year Award

Anaya Joynes, a senior in industrial engineering and president of the Pitt chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), was watching with anticipation from her apartment while the awards at the NSBE 48th Annual Convention in Anaheim, Calif., were being announced.

She asked Vice President and bioengineering senior Anna Kelly, who had traveled to the event, to call her on FaceTime so she could witness her chapter’s in-person perspective as well as the official Zoom broadcast. It was behind this array of screens that she learned the Pitt chapter had won the Regional Chapter of the Year Award.

“I was in my apartment watching on two screens, just going crazy,” said Joynes. “It was validation – we put in a lot of work this year to provide structure to how we’re operating after being virtual throughout the pandemic.”

Her hybrid conference experience was somewhat appropriate following a very difficult couple of years of pandemic life, navigating online classes and NSBE events. Not only did NSBE need to learn to how to host online and hybrid events and meetings, but they also had to navigate how and when to transition back to in-person events. This part was tricky –especially when many members have spent the first few years of their college experience completely online.

“It felt amazing and humbling to get that award. And it felt like a relief, as well, because we really did work hard this year, especially with it being the first year completely in-person for most of the school year,” recalled Kelly, who traveled to the conference with 11 other NSBE members. “We worked hard to put on programs where members could feel they belong and feel like they’re being developed in a different way. Going back to in-person took an emotional and mental toll, especially on freshmen, and we all had to balance taking care of ourselves and creating beneficial programming and outreach.”

The Regional Chapter of the Year Award celebrates the chapter in each of six regions that excels in membership and events. (The region Pitt belongs to includes 149 chapters from eight U.S. states, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.)

Among the Pitt chapter’s proudest recent accomplishments was organizing A Walk for Education last year, which is an annual event to increase STEM and college exposure through workshops for K-12 students. For the first time, the event was entirely virtual, with over 80 students signing on from all over the country to learn about STEM through workshops.

“To me, that was an amazing experience, because people from all over the country were logging onto a Pitt event,” said Kelly. “We spent hours planning, and we got valuable feedback. But hearing, ‘I want to get into STEM,’ or ‘I want to be an engineer’? We had a real impact on people who might go into STEM because of our event. That is my proudest moment from this year.”

A Place that Feels Like Home

For Pitt NSBE members, the organization is more than a professional development opportunity, though it is certainly that, too. It is a space where they can feel safe to be themselves and connect with others who have had the same experiences as them.

“I joined NSBE because I knew I would need a space I’d be comfortable in at Swanson, because Pitt is a PWI (predominantly white institution). I needed to find people who felt like a family and understood where I was coming from, as well as professional development and leadership development,” said Kelly. “That’s why I got involved, but I stayed because I made friends and was pushed to be a better person and better leader.”

Yvette Moore, the group’s advisor and director of Pitt EXCEL, has been a driving force in supporting NSBE students and leadership through a difficult few years.

“This year’s NSBE leaders were really their Ancestors’ Wildest Dream! They pushed the envelope on what it meant to really support, encourage, nurture, and groom the next generation of leaders,” said Moore. “I am so proud of the heart that the organization and its leaders had. They went above the call of duty to give back to their community. Even in the toughest of times, they stayed true to the

mission. As an advisor to the chapter, I learn as much as I may teach, and that is the beauty of relationship!”

“We’re so appreciative to Ms. Moore for sticking with us and talking to Anna and me about how to support the executive board and general body coming out of the pandemic,” said Joynes. “She pushed us to think about them and not just ourselves. She is a huge reason we won and even have a board and members.”

For both Kelly and Joynes, moving on from their leadership positions in NSBE is bittersweet, but they are confident in the next generation of leaders to continue their legacy. NSBE played

a key role guiding and supporting its members through a challenging time, and Joynes feels like the next generation will carry forward and expand upon that mission.

“I was telling Ms. Moore that now I really feel like I’ve made an impact on the chapter,” Joynes said. “Seeing my own mentees now running for the top five positions, I think about how I was molded and mentored by my predecessors. Being in a NSBE leadership position is not easy, but I see their enthusiasm and willingness to lead. It feels like a remarkable success to have been someone who made it seem fun and interesting, someone who made them want to run, too.”

I needed to find people who felt like a family and understood where I was coming from...

Swanson School of Engineering Celebrates

NiSource President

Lloyd Yates as its Distinguished Alumnus

Postponed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering’s 61st Distinguished Alumni Banquet finally was celebrated Thursday, April 8, 2022 in the University Club. Lloyd Yates BSMechE ‘82, President and CEO of NiSource Inc., was officially honored as the Swanson School’s Distinguished Alumnus.

Yates serves as NiSource President and Chief Executive Officer and has been in this role since February 14, 2022. He is also a member of the NiSource Board of Directors and served on the NiSource Board as an independent Director from 2020 – 2022. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc.

Previously, he held senior roles at Duke Energy Corporation, including Executive Vice President, Customer and Delivery Operations, and President, Carolinas Region. He was responsible for aligning customer focused products and services to deliver a personalized end-to-end customer experience to position Duke Energy for long term growth, as well as for the profit/loss,

strategic direction, and performance of Duke Energy’s regulated utilities in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Yates also served as Executive Vice President of Regulated Utilities at Duke Energy, overseeing Duke Energy’s utility operations in six states, federal government affairs, and environmental and energy policy at the state and federal levels, as well as Executive Vice President, Customer Operations, where he led the transmission, distribution, customer services, gas operations and grid modernization functions for millions of utility customers. Earlier in his career, he held several line and management positions with PECO Energy before serving at Progress Energy in various senior roles.

Yates earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and MBA from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia. He attended the Advanced Management Program at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and the Executive Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Three faculty members

and a staff member were honored with the chancellor’s distinguished award in 2022.

Samuel Dickerson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award for his role in leading the undergraduate computer engineering program, one of the largest in the school. Dickerson also personally advises more than 300 students.

Götz Veser, Nickolas A. DeCecco Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award for his work developing a third of the classes in his department’s undergraduate curriculum. Along with developing courses and showing a willingness to teach beyond his required load, Veser created two student clubs.

John Sebastian, director of the McKamish Construction Management Program and professor of civil and environmental engineering, received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award for co-creating the Experiencing Architecture summer program and leveraging his extensive industry experience and network to mentor students and benefit Pitt’s construction management program. Sebastian also serves on the board of the Sarah Heinz House, the ACE Mentor program, the Mascaro Construction Academy and Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, on which he chairs its governance committee.

Jill Harvey, director of first year advising, captured the 2022 Chancellor’s Award for Staff, the highest honor for staff at Pitt. Harvey oversees all first-year programming and advising for engineering students – including making sure students are adapting emotionally and academically to college life.

Department of Bioengineering Faculty

Professors Fabrisia Ambrosio (Primary: Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation; Secondary: Department of Bioengineering) and Ramakrishna Mukkamala (Primary: Department of Bioengineering and Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine; Secondary: Electrical and Computer Engineering) were elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows, in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in medical and biological engineering.

Professor Rakie Cham was elected president of the American Society of Biomechanics. Cham is a member of the Human Movement and Balance Laboratory where her research focuses on improving postural stability and reducing falls and related musculoskeletal injuries. She holds secondary appointments in Ophthalmology and Physical Therapy.

Lecturer David Gau received a K99/R00 Career Transition Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his work on clear cell renal cell carcinoma. The award provides $126,047 per year during his two-year fellowship, which proposes a new treatment method for the disease.

Professors Partha Roy and Jonathan Vande Geest were among the winners of the 2022 Pitt Innovation Challenge. Roy and his co-PI Christi Kolarcik, PhD, received $100,000 and a $15,000 bonus for their “Actin Against ALS” pitch; while Vande Geest and his co-PI, John Pacella, MD, were awarded $35,000 and a $15,000 bonus for their “Biocarpet” pitch.

Distinguished University Professor Savio L-Y. Woo, founding director of the Musculoskeletal Research Center, was named an Honorary Member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) for his pioneering work in

biomechanics. The Board of Governors of ASME unanimously elected Woo for his “dedication to joint biomechanics, exemplified by innovative use of robots; and for excellence in mentorship.”

Students & Alumi

PhD Candidate Usamma Amjad received the 2022 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship Award from the Department of Defense. The program supports graduate students in science and engineering whose work is important to the mission of the DoD. Amjad works in the Schwerdt Lab, led by Helen Schwerdt, assistant professor of bioengineering, who focuses on building implantable tools for probing multiple forms of brain activity, built for use over the entirety of a human lifetime. These tools would allow researchers to understand brain function and improve the diagnosis and treatment of neurological disorders.

The American Society of Biomechanics (ASB) selected graduate student Anna Bailes DPT ’21 to serve as a Student Representative on the ASB Executive Board. The Student Representative is responsible for managing student members of ASB, collaborating with the Executive Board, encouraging student involvement in ASB, organizing student-focused events, and serving the interests of student members.

Graduate students Christopher Cover, Brittany Egnot, Michelle Karabin, Vince Lee, Kevin Steiger, and Sara Trbojevic received F30 and F31 Predoctoral Fellowships from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The competitive fellowships allow graduate students in the health sciences to develop their research in aging and Alzheimer’s disease while earning their doctoral degrees.

PhD students Camila Garcia and Emani Hunter received scholarships from the Achievement Rewards for College Students Foundation, Inc. for their work to improve treatment for under-represented communities

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and patients with neurological disorders. Garcia, recipient of ARCS’ Rivers-Zawadzki Endowed Award, is using her current research to understand how neurotransmitter flux plays a role in circadian rhythms which regulate homeostasis in the brain. Hunter, recipient of ARCS’ Crawford-Stockman Endowed Award, is focusing her research on machine learning approaches to bioimaging modalities from both human and animal MRIs to aid in the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases.

Michelle Riffitts, BSBioE ’18, DPT ’21, BioE PhD ’21, was named the 2022 Wesley C. Pickard Fellow by the Department of Bioengineering.

Recipients of this award are selected by the department chair and chosen based on academic merit. Riffitts completed her Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) through the University of Pittsburgh’s Dual DPT-PhD in Bioengineering program. She now works as a physical therapist in the outpatient orthopedic setting.

Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Faculty

In recognition of contributions to particle technology research, the World Assembly of Particle Technology presented Professor George A. Klinzing with its Lifetime Achievement Award at the Ninth World Congress on Particle Technology (WCPT) in Madrid, Spain. Klinzing, who is Emeritus Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at Pitt’s Swanson School of Engineering, was feted for “a lifetime of excellence in the field of particle technology.”

WPCT is the world’s major scientific congress for particle and bulk solids technology, an international forum for research, technological development, and innovation in new technologies.

Steven R. Little, Distinguished Professor and Department Chair was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and recognized “for remarkable

service to charities that advance education in science in impoverished countries and leadership in science internationally.” Little is one of four Pitt and UPMC faculty named in 2022 as AAAS Fellows, one of the most distinct honors within the scientific community, dating to 1874.

Giannis Mpourmpakis, associate professor and Bicentennial Alumni Faculty Fellow was invited to present at the 2022 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting’s “Spotlights in Thermodynamics and Computational Molecular Science” session. Mpourmpakis’s talk, titled ”Thermodynamic Stability of Multimetallic Nanoparticles,” highlighted recent advancements in accurately describing the thermodynamic stability of bimetallic nanoparticles through Density Functional Theory calculations and machine learning.

Students & Alumi

Benjamin Hudock ’22 was one of nine Pitt students named as Fulbright Scholars in 2022.

The US Fulbright Program grants selected students the opportunity to teach English abroad. Huduck will be headed to Brazil for the program and is one of nine Swanson School students to have earned the honor in the past decade.

Malena Rybacki ’22 was one of 24 students awarded at the Future Leaders Symposium at North Carolina State University. They presented their work on converting carbon dioxide into usable products.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty

Associate Professor Leanne Gilbertson was named one of the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists’ (AAEES) inaugural 40 Under 40 who have, either personally or as part of a team, been

responsible for helping to advance the fields of Environmental Science or Environmental Engineering in a demonstrable way within the last 12 months.

Professor Lev Khazanovich received the International Society of Concrete Pavements (ISCP) Eldon J. Yoder Award for Best Paper at the 12th International Conference on Concrete Pavements. The paper, “Re-evaluation of Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavement Structural Model“ was recognized with coauthors Lucio Salles de Salles and José Tadeu Balbo (University of Sao Paulo).

Professor Piervincenzo Rizzo was elected as a Fellow of the American Society for Nondestructive Testing (ASNT) in the Class of 2022. ASNT members with at least 15 years of professional experience in nondestructive testing and 10 years of membership are eligible to be nominated as Fellows. Selected Fellows have demonstrated their support for the organization through contributions and participation.

Professor John Sebastian, director of the McKamish Construction Management Program a, received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award for co-creating the Experiencing Architecture summer program and leveraging his extensive industry experience and network to mentor students and benefit Pitt’s construction management program. Sebastian also serves on the board of the Sarah Heinz House, the ACE Mentor program, the Mascaro Construction Academy and Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, on which he chairs its governance committee. Associate Professor Aleksandar Stevanovic was awarded Best Paper Award at the 2nd International Conference on Civil Engineering Fundamentals and Applications (ICCEFA’21) (Virtual Conference), November 21-23, 2021. (Dobrota, N., and Stevanovic, A., (2021).

“Modelling of Delay for Protected/Permitted Left Turning Vehicles using Multigene Genetic Programming.”)

David V.P. Sanchez, assistant professor and associate director of the Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation, was awarded the Swanson School of Engineering’s Outstanding Educator Award and the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Award for Outstanding Teaching in Environmental Engineering & Science. Sanchez previously received the 2020 Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

Students & Alumni

PhD Candidate Farzaneh Azadi was named a 2022 Lifesavers Traffic Safety Scholar and will attend the Lifesavers National Conference on Highway Safety Priorities, March 12-15, one of 43 U.S. and international students selected through a competitive application process. The Lifesavers Conference showcases the latest research, evidence-based strategies, proven countermeasures, and promising new approaches for addressing the nation’s most pressing traffic safety problems.

Kaveh Barri PhD ’22 secured a postdoctoral position in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

Yashar Aucie, Kaveh Barri, and Gloria Zhang won the 2022 Randall Family Big Idea Competition for developing a new class of 3D printed self-powered metamaterial implants.

Greg Banyay PhD ’19 has taken a position as an Assistant Research Professor at Penn State University’s Center for Acoustics and Vibration.

PhD student Alireza Enshaiean won the 2nd place for the Best Student Paper at the 2022 SPIE Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation Conference for the paper: Enshaeian, A., Belding, M., and Rizzo, P. (2022). “A novel vibration-based method to measure stress in rails”, Proceedings Volume 12048, Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems XVI; 120481C (2022) https://doi. org/10.1117/12.2612296, SPIE Smart Structures + Nondestructive Evaluation, 2022, Long Beach, California, United States.

Aron Griffin BSCE ’22 received a GEM Fellowship Award which provides students funding for graduate school through corporate sponsorships and university partnerships in order to promote opportunities for individuals to enter industry at the graduate level. Griffin’s fellowship is sponsored by Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms, where he will intern as a design engineer, and Carnegie Mellon University, where Griffin will pursue a MS in computational mechanics.

Yao Huang won 2022 American Rock Mechanics Association Neville GW Cook Best Dissertation Award for her thesis entitled “Analysis of Sleeve Fracturing and Burst Experiments for Measurement of In-Situ Stress and Rock Fracture Toughness.”

Fiyinfoluwa (Fiyin) Odeniyi ’24 won the New York Association of Transportation Engineers (NYSATE) Adopt-an-Undergrad Scholarship.

PhD student Jemimaedere Ohwobete (Mima) was awarded a Pitt STRIVE PhD fellowship.

PhD students Soumaya Ouhsousou and Rodrigo Arauz Sosa were both finalists for the 2022 ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute Elasticity Committee Student Paper Competition.

PhD student Isaiah Spencer-Williams ’19 won first prize for his presentation at the Pennsylvania Water Environment Association’s 93rd Annual Technical Conference (PennTec)

James Thomas ’09 was named to the Charleston (SC) Regional Business Journal.

Forty Under 40 Class which honors top young business professionals across the Charleston region who excel in their chosen profession and provide service to their community. Thomas is a Principal and Project Manager at Thomas & Hutton in Charleston, a pr ivately held professional services company providing consulting, planning, and engineering design services related to land and infrastructure.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty

NuSense Technology – High Spatial Resolution Optical Sensors for Harsh Environments, an innovation developed through a collaboration between the Swanson School of Engineering with the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Lab (NETL) as co-developer, was one of the recipients of the prestigious 2022 R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine. Principal investigator and lead developer is Kevin P. Chen, the Paul E. Lego Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. NETL scientists whose work contributed to this innovation are Michael Buric and Paul Ohodnicki. Buric, an ECE alumnus and a former doctoral student with Chen, is the NETL research lead. Ohodnicki is a former NETL research scientist and now associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the Swanson School.

Brandon Grainger, Eaton faculty fellow, associate professor and associate director of the Energy GRID Institute, was recognized for his inspiration to others in the classroom.  Grainger received an honorable mention for the Most Inspiring Educator Award through the Carnegie Science Center. The award is granted to any grade-level educator that “inspires their students to learn, grow, question, and explore their interests.”

Assistant Professor Robert Kerestes received the Provost’s Award for Diversity in the Curriculum. The award recognizes a faculty member’s efforts to integrate diversity and inclusion concepts into courses and curricula at Pitt. Kerestes was honored for efforts incorporating teamwork, gamification, and diversity and inclusion best practices into his Electromagnetics course (ECE 1259), a core course for undergraduates in electrical engineering.

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Senior Vice Chancellor for Research Rob A. Rutenbar received the 2021 SIGDA Pioneering Achievement Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM SIGDA) for his “extraordinary leadership in analog design automation and general EDA education.” This award recognizes outstanding contributions within the scope of electronic design automation (EDA) and is based on the impact of the awardee’s work during their lifetime. Rutenbar holds Distinguished Professor appointments in the School of Computing and Information and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Students

PhD student Yubo Du won the 3rd place at ACM Special Interest Group on Design Automation (SIGDA) University Demonstration at the 59th IEEE/ACM Design Automation Conference (DAC), for her outstanding demonstration by using multimodality neural network model deployed on embedded GPU to do real time human sentiment analysis. She has also been selected as a DAC Young Fellow. PhD student Jinming Zhuang was selected as a 2021 Design Automation Conference (DAC) Young Fellow and won the Best Research Video Award for his outstanding research review presentation.

Engineering Science

Noah French, engineering science sophomore, has been selected for the extremely competitive Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US Department of Commerce.

As a scholarship winner, French will receive up to $9500 per academic year to support his studies, along with paid summer internship opportunities at NOAA facilities across the United States.

The scholarship was established in 2005 and is named in honor of retired South Carolina Senator Ernest F. Hollings. The purpose of the program is to increase undergraduate training in oceanic and atmospheric science, research, technology and education; to increase the public understanding and support for stewardship of the ocean and atmosphere; as well as prepare students for public service careers with NOAA and in related fields of study.

Department of Industrial Engineering Faculty

Professor Joel Haight was elected Fellow of the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), the world’s oldest professional safety organization. Haight conducts research on topics such as human factors engineering, biomechanics and safety engineering and has published more than 70 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, book chapters and proceedings papers. He has been an ASSP member since 1985 and served on the Society’s Board of Directors from 2018-21.

Lisa Maillart, Interim Chair of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, has been selected for the Class of 2022-2023 of Drexel University’s Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science (ELATES) program. ELATES is a national leadership development program designed to promote women in academic STEM fields, and faculty allies of all genders, into institutional leadership roles.

Students

Seniors Nicole Lipa and Gloria Givler were awarded scholarships from the Institute of Industrial and Systems of Engineers for academic excellence and campus leadership.” To be eligible, students must have a grade point average over 3.4. Awards are valued up to $4,000.

Lipa, recipient of the Harold and Inge Marcus Scholarship, recently finished her co-op at Connors Group, a management consultancy, where she worked as an analyst. On campus, she is the vice president of professional development for Pitt’s Society of Women Engineers. She is also involved in Incline Consulting Group, a student-run organization that offers pro-bono strategic and technology consulting to nonprofit organizations. Givler, recipient of the Dwight D. Gardner Scholarship, is in her third co-op rotation at Seegrid, an automated material handling equipment company located in Pittsburgh. She is also the mentorship chair for Pitt’s Society of Women Engineers and volunteers with All in PA to help students register to vote. She said she is honored to receive this award.

Ayushi Gupta ’22 won First Place at the IISE Student Paper Technical Competition in competition with schools from across the Northeastern US at the IISE Student Regional Conference in Rochester, NY in February 2022.  Her paper, Facility Design and Simulation Modeling of a COVID 19 vaccination clinic in the Pittsburgh area, was completed as part of a project with faculty member Dr. Bopaya Bidanda, Ernest Roth Professor of Industrial Engineering and Philip Andreoli (Pitt IE, Class of 2022).

The Cooperative & Experiential Education Division (CEED) of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) named Erin Marshall ’22 as its 2022 CEED Intern Student of the Year. Marshall was nominated for her internship at West Monroe in Chicago, Ill., where she worked with a team to develop and analyze a business continuity plan for a multibillion-dollar utilities company in the event of a cyber-attack.

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Faculty

Hessam Babaee, assistant professor, is the recipient of the National Institute of Health (NIH) R21 Trailblazer award for his project titled “Enhanced Clinical Diagnosis through Imaging and Modeling: A Machine Learning Data Fusion Framework.” The R21 grant mechanism from the NIH is intended to encourage exploratory/ developmental research by providing support for the early and conceptual stages of project development.

Peyman Givi, Distinguished Professor and James T. MacLeod Professor, received the University of Pittsburgh Provost’s Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring, The award recognizes outstanding mentors who have the greatest impact on students seeking research doctorate degrees. Givi was also elected Fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics at its 16th Pan-American Congress of Applied Mechanics.

The Pitt STRIVE program selected Katherine Hornbostel, assistant professor, to receive the 2021 Outstanding DEI Service Award. This accolade recognizes her efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering.

John Swanson Endowed Professor Scott Mao (retired) was the 2022 recipient of the Metal Physics Award from The Metallurgy and Materials Society of CIM. Since 1977, the Metal Physics Award has been given to deserving researchers to recognize their achievements in fundamental physics of importance to the understanding of metals as materials. The title of Mao’s award-winning paper is “Atomistic processes of deformation in nanocrystals with in-situ high resolution transmission electron microscope.”

Wei Xiong, assistant professor, received a $526,334 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project is titled “Unraveling Fundamental Mechanisms Governing Grain Refinement in Complex Concentrated Alloys Made by Additive Manufacturing Towards Strong and Ductile Structures” and has a five-year duration.

Students

Asher Hancock ’22 received a Churchill Scholarship funding a year of study at the University of Cambridge in the UK. He is one of 18 awardees this year, and the fifth Pitt student to be honored with the award. Hancock also received a Goldwater Scholarship in 2021. Zachary Egolf received an NSF graduate research fellowship but instead accepted a prestigious Rickover Fellowship in Nuclear Engineering. His advisor is Jeff Vipperman.

Seth Strayer, a second-year PhD student, received a prestigious NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO) award. The award sponsors U.S. citizen and permanent resident graduate students who show significant potential to contribute to NASA’s goal of creating innovative new space technologies for our Nation’s science, exploration and economic future.

First-year MEMS PhD student Yang-Duan Su is first author on a paper recently named Editor’s Choice by Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). The article, “Fiber Optic Sensing Technology for Battery Management Systems and Energy Storage Applications,” appeared in the 2021 edition of MDPI open Access Journal Sensors. This is Su’s first publication as a MEMS graduate student.

Steven Tsoukalas, mechanical engineering sophomore, was awarded the Naugle Fellowship in Mechanical Engineering for 2022. The fellowship comes in the form of a one-time payment that will be used to reduce tuition debt.

Lauren Wewer ’22 received the best poster award at the American Society for Metals (ASM) Young Members Night Poster Competition. “Alloy Design by Additive Manufacturing for Power Plants with High Energy Efficiency” showed Wewer’s research results generated from a MASCRO summer research internship she completed last summer on graded alloy additive manufacturing. She outcompeted other students from both Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University in the undergraduate category to win the award.

Sarah Wielgosz ’22 was the 2022 winner of the Marion Alice Nye “Buzz” Barry Scholarship, named in honor of Marion Alice Nye “Buzz” Barry, a licensed commercial pilot, certified flight and ground school instructor, a member of the Ninety-Nine Women Pilots Association, and one of the first women in the aviation industry. The scholarship can be used for tuition or sponsored academic research related to aerospace engineering.

The recently organized Pitt Electric Propulsion student group, a part of Pitt’s Electric Vehicle Engineering Design Team, comprised of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering students took home third place at the Promoting Electric Propulsion (PEP) for small craft competition held in Pohick Bay, VA this past May. This was Pitt’s first year competing, and the third year the competition has taken place. The competition is sponsored by the American Society of Naval Engineers (ASNE). The PEP competition is an educational and competitive program to foster the development of electric watercraft in the United States. Each college team received up to a $7000 technology mini-grant to construct an electric-powered boat that can complete a five-mile race. The competition had manned and unmanned categories, with Pitt participating in the former.

Swanson Fast Facts 2022

STUDENT-TO-FACULTY RATIO

PERCENT OF STUDENTS TAUGHT BY FACULTY 100%

AVERAGE STARTING SALARY FOR SWANSON SCHOOL GRADUATE

~$70,052

CO-OP JOB OFFER RATE 83%

PERCENT OF GRADUATING CLASS WITH AN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION EXPERIENCE

19%

NUMBER OF LIVING ALUMNI

29,393

Swanson School of Engineering

104 Benedum Hall

3700 O’Hara Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15261

engineering.pitt.edu