Research news

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

Drones are revolutionizing the ways geologists conduct surveys. “We can access geological formations that, on foot, we could never access,” says Professor Laura Toran, “and drones are radically speeding up the time it takes to conduct surveys.”

Within the past year, both Toran and Associate Professor Alexandra Davatzes began using Mavic Pro drones to both conduct research and to explore using drones in new ways. Toran’s drone is equipped with thermal and imaging cameras. She and her lab have been using it to map variations in stream temperatures and to map plant health in stormwater basins by periodically photographing plants to chronicle their growth, height and presence.

Focusing on integrating cognitive science and intelligent systems to enhance geoscience practice, Davatzes is working with a team of roboticists and cognitive scientists. The team has been flying drones in areas deformed by southern California’s San Andreas fault, including along a steep cliff face.

“We’re trying to integrate our knowledge of geology, robotics and cognitive science to think critically about how we can best automate drones to help geologists do field work, particularly in inaccessible or very large areas,” Davatzes says. “Do we just use drones the same way we normally do field work, by walking around, or, utilizing artificial intelligence, can we use them in innovative ways so that, for instance, they could automatically detect faults?”

Toran also launched a one credit, introductory drone course to teach students how to fly drones and learn about drone safety and ethics, and requirements for becoming a certified drone pilot. The 40-student class included students from across CST, as well as students from the colleges of Engineering and of Liberal Arts.

CST’s newest Goldwater Scholar

BY ANDREW LOCHRIE AND ERIC HORVATH

Leah Deflitch, a neuroscience: cellular & molecular major, is a 2020 Goldwater Scholar, the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. She is CST’s and Temple’s third Goldwater recipient, following physics major Marcus Forst in 2018 and physics and mechanical engineering major Mitchell Young in 2019.

With 450 institutions submitting applicants, the Goldwater Scholarship Foundation named nearly 400 scholarship recipients nationally in 2020. Deflitch will receive $7,500 for tuition, housing and fees for her senior year as she continues her research.

A Pittsburgh native, Deflitich has been conducting neurobiology research since her freshman year. “My lab has been very conducive to undergraduateled research, and we basically look to understand the underlying molecular and genetic mechanisms of abrupt memory deficits, like delirium,” Deflitch said. “It’s been a great experience.”

Deflitch has presented her findings for two consecutive years at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, a neuroscience conference drawing scientists and physicians from more than 80 countries. Deflitch said the cognitive decline associated with delirium can be a precursor to dementia and Alzheimer’s. She said she’s excited by the potential her work can have for people suffering from these common degenerative ailments.

Deflitch is founder of the Temple chapter of Scientista, an organization encouraging the participation of women in STEM. After she earns her degree in 2021, she plans to pursue a PhD in neuroscience with the eventual hope of becoming a professor and principal investigator of her own research laboratory.

SHEIKH SAUD LECTURE ON ADVANCED MATERIALS

BY GREG FORNIA

CST and Temple Materials Institute hosted the 2020 Sheikh Saud Lecture on Advanced Materials featuring Daan Frenkel, professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. His research interests focus on numerical simulations of many-body systems, with a special emphasis on problems relating to ordering and self-assembly in soft matter.

Computer simulations in the 1950s and ’60s played a key role in the development of simple liquids theory. Starting in the ’80s, colloidal suspensions of hard, spherical particles became the prime example of “simple liquids” where theory, simulation and experiment could meet.

Today, there is a good understanding of the equilibrium properties of colloidal suspensions. When we consider colloid systems out of equilibrium, however, scientific understanding is far from complete. Frenkel discussed simulations that suggest that it should be possible to observe colloidal particles that behave as magnetic monopoles.

Frenkel was head of the Cambridge Chemistry Department from 2011 to 2015 and director of research at Cambridge from 2015 to 2018. He is a member of the Royal Society (London), U. S. National Academy of Sciences and World Academy of Sciences. He received numerous international prizes including the IUPAP Boltzmann Medal and APS Aneesur Rahman Prize.

CREATING NEW NANOPARTICLE MATERIALS

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

Chemistry Associate Professor Yugang Sun’s research focuses on the potential of novel nanomaterials for utilizing solar energy—rather than heat—to catalyze important chemical reactions. His research, currently National Science Foundation funded, has three thrusts: developing a strategy to synthesize highperformance nanoscale catalyst materials; analyzing these materials’ formation and transformation; and utilizing these catalysts to harvest light energy that drives important chemical reactions.

“We’re trying to use solar energy to drive chemical reactions with improved activity and selectivity on quantum-sized metal nanoparticle catalysts,” he says. “Once we understand why the nanoparticles are behaving the way they are, we can use that information as feedback to design better performing catalysts. If we’re successful, we might be able to overcome the limitations of reaction selectivity determined by thermodynamics.”

The potential applications of photocatalysis on quantum-sized metal nanoparticle catalysts range from reducing carbon dioxide emissions to manufacturing novel pharmaceuticals.

Making sure big data doesn’t swamp storage and performance capabilities

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

Big data is revolutionizing many scientific fields. Professor Xubin He, of the Department of Computer & Information Sciences, is committed to assuring that the big-data storage and input/output (I/O) systems can keep up with the demand. Over the past six years, He—who joined Temple in 2016 from Virginia Commonwealth University—has participated in research projects totaling $3.7 million, with his share of that funding exceeding $2 million.

According to He, big data represents three main challenges from the computer systems aspect: huge growth of digital data has made it harder for systems to find requested information as quickly as possible; new file and data management systems are needed because traditional systems have become swamped by data volume; and, as data volumes increase, failures become more common.

“We may be able to tolerate slightly slower computers, but none of us can tolerate data loss, whether it’s business sensitive data or five years of our photos,” says He, director of the Storage Technology and Architecture Research (STAR) lab. He is also collaborating on his research with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, New Jersey Institute of Technology and China’s Huazhong University of Science & Technology, one of the world’s premier computer science institutions.

“We aren’t generating data ourselves, but we’re trying to design algorithms and solutions that create reliable, high-performance building blocks that adequately support data storage and I/O systems,” he says.

FunScienceDemos tops 100,000 YouTube subscribers

BY GREG FORNIA

FunScienceDemos—more than 200 free, open-sourced educational videos for school children produced by faculty and students from the College of Science and Technology—has reached more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers.

“If our recent history has taught us anything, it is that science literacy, worldwide, should be a priority,” says Assistant Professor of Practice George Mehler, who leads Temple’s STEM-oriented FunScienceNetwork project. “Each day, FunScienceDemos is delivering quality science lessons into virtually every country of the world.”

Reaching more than 100,000 subscribers is a big milestone in the world of YouTube. In the coming months the channel will be vetted by YouTube, and then have access to their studios in New York City and receive advice and support from the professional YouTube team.

FunScience team member Jared Hottenstein helped create FunScience Scavenger Hunts, and Naomi Lawson, a chemistry with teaching major, recorded a video on the coronavirus literally hours before Temple closed Main Campus in March. Those efforts helped membership soar.

“When we started this project, we could not have imagined what we would achieve,” says Mehler, who was the science education coordinator in the Central Bucks School District in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for 25 years.

FunScience Network is comprised of multiple components, including FunScienceToons, when finished a YouTube channel featuring science animations; FunScienceProductions, science-themed episodes shown on Temple TV, Philadelphia cable and in the Fairfax County School District of Virginia; and FunScienceTools, coming in 2021, a resource for science education that will feature the best science education developers from around the world.

WATCH FUNSCIENCE VIDEOS AT WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/USER/FUNSCIENCEDEMOS.

Probing Antarctic phytoplankton for mixotrophy

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

Robert Sanders, professor and chair of the Department of Biology, spent seven weeks off the coast of the Western Antarctica Peninsula analyzing microscopic phytoplankton, or algae, found in the Southern Ocean.

His team was most interested in a phenomenon called mixotrophy, in which phytoplankton can fuel their energy needs both via photosynthesis, from the sun’s rays, and by ingesting smaller algae or bacteria. The ability to use particulate food could partly explain how phytoplankton are able to survive through the long darkness of the Antarctic winter.

Although mixotrophs were described first in the late 1800s, the phenomenon’s widespread prevalence was not apparent for another hundred years when several scientists, including Sanders, began focusing on mixotroph ecology and distribution. Sanders—who also has studied it in lakes and in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans—and his research team are the only scientists who have published on its impact in the Southern Ocean. Extending their previous work to Antarctica’s Ross Sea, his team confirmed the occurrence of mixotrophs in plankton populations off of the Western Antarctic Peninsula.

“In every sample we took, we found evidence of mixotrophy,” says Sanders. “It shows how widespread it is.” To quantify the diversity of phytoplankton species they found in the ocean water and in sea ice, Sanders’ team is currently performing DNA analyses of their samples.

The expedition team included two additional Biology Department researchers, JeanDavid Grattepanche, research assistant professor, and Christopher Carnivale, PhD candidate, as well as scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and University of West Florida.

EES geothermal research in U.S. West

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

Earth & Environmental Science Department faculty, students and alumni are all heavily involved in geothermal research to help develop clean, geothermally driven electricity in both California and the Pacific Northwest. “Unlike intermittent energy generation from solar or wind, geothermal can provide consistent baseload energy and match demand,” says Nicholas Davatzes, chair and associate professor.

In California, EES is partnering with Warner Mountain Energy company, supported by the California Energy Commission, to assess the geothermal potential in the state’s northeast corner. Last year, as predicted, an exploratory well found boiling water 3,600 feet deep. This year one of Davatzes graduate students will be working with the U.S. Geological Survey to map magnetic field anomalies that could further identify potential drilling sites.

In northern Washington State, Davatzes is investigating the geothermal potential of Mt. Baker in collaboration with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources and support from the U.S. Department of Energy, and two EES alums, Michael Swyer, CST ’11, a geologist with Salt Lake City-based CYRQ Energy, and Drew Spake, CST ’19, a geologist now employed by ORMAT.

Last year, Davatzes ran geophysical logs and acquired core material from a 1,500-foot-deep exploration site. Besides the two Temple alumni, he was assisted by current graduate student Morgan Sawyer and geology major Breeann Stowe, CST ’20, who is studying the core. “We’re currently preparing a report about the resource potential,” Davatzes says. “It could be promising.”

Physics Department plays key role in new electron ion collider

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), supported in part by the efforts of the Department of Physics faculty, has selected Brookhaven National Laboratory as the site for a new multi-billion-dollar electron ion collider (EIC), a powerful microscope for studying the “glue” that binds the building blocks of visible matter.

The EIC will smash electrons into protons and heavier atomic nuclei in an effort to penetrate the mysteries of the “strong force” that binds the atomic nucleus together. The nuclear physics research facility, to be designed and constructed over 10 years at an estimated cost between $1.6 and $2.6 billion, is located in Upton, N.Y.

“Scientists will be able to explore the structure of matter in a way that it has never been done before; literally imaging the structure of matter, the structure of the atomic nucleus and the structure of nucleons, like the proton, for example,” says Professor Bernd Surrow, physics vice chair, who also serves as steering committee chair of the Electron-Ion Collider User Group (EICUG), an international affiliation of more than 900 scientists dedicated to developing and promoting the scientific, technological and educational goals for a new high-energy EIC. Another Temple physics professor, Andreas Metz, serves on EICUG’s Physics Working Group.

“There is nothing planned like it in China, Japan or Europe,” says Surrow. “This will provide generations of physics PhD students, as well as researchers in areas such as high-tech and data science, with a unique research facility. The U.S. is really taking a leadership role, and Temple Physics is an important part of this effort.”

Samuel Taylor named a Sloan Research Fellow

BY GREG FORNIA

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation named mathematician Samuel Taylor a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow. The highly competitive honor identifies rising scientists who’ve made significant marks on their field and represent the next generation of leaders in the U.S. and Canada.

Since the award’s inception in the mid 1950s, five Temple faculty members have been named Sloan Research Fellows, including three faculty members from the Department of Mathematics.

“Having my research recognized at this level is a huge honor,” says Taylor, an assistant professor who joined the department in 2017 from a position at Yale University as Gibbs Assistant Professor. “Many of my mentors were themselves Sloan Fellows, so having this point of comparison to them at a similar career stage is extremely rewarding.”

Taylor’s research interests include geometric topology and geometric group theory, with a focus on hyperbolic geometry and dynamics. In particular, he has studied the geometry of fiber bundles as well as various statistical properties of geometrically significant groups.

“I like to find and exploit the geometry of whatever object I’m thinking about. Sometimes that means studying the properties of the shortest loops on two dimensional spaces, and sometimes that means thinking about spaces of graphs and their symmetries,” explains Taylor, a Philadelphia-area native.

The Sloan fellowship includes a $75,000 grant, which Taylor had planned to use for research travel this upcoming fall but is now hoping to do in early 2021. A passionate educator, Taylor has a deep interest in helping students succeed. “I also have a postdoc starting at Temple in the fall,” he says, “and the additional money can help fund her travel and research program as well.”

IRINA MITREA NAMED A CARNELL PROFESSOR

BY BRUCE E. BEANS

Temple University named Irina Mitrea a Laura H. Carnell Professor. CST now has 11 Carnell Professors, more than any other Temple University school or college. Mitrea, chair of the Department of Mathematics, is the first female CST professor to be so named.

“I am honored and humbled to have my work recognized this way, especially since the Laura Carnell professorships are a tribute to the legacy of such a trailblazing female faculty member and Temple’s first dean,” she says.

In 2019, Mitrea earned a prestigious Simons Foundation Fellowship that supported travel to conduct collaborative research and lecture about her work. She spent most of her time at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, England. She also spent time at Uppsala University in Sweden and the Simion Stoilow Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest before her travels were cut short by COVID-19.

A renowned leader in her field of harmonic analysis and partial differential equations, Mitrea spent most of her fellowship time collaborating with mathematicians from around the world on research they have pursued for nearly 10 years. They were able to finish one research monograph and made significant progress on another.

“This work concerns partial differential equations which model physical phenomena, such as heat or fluid flow, elasticity or electromagnetism, and we are focusing on solving problems in domains whose boundaries are not smooth surfaces but exhibit a lot of disparities, irregularities and roughness,” she says.

ALEXANDRA KRULL DAVATZES

CST faculty earn Temple recognition

Every year, Temple University celebrates the achievements of its faculty in the areas of teaching, service, creativity and research with the faculty awards: the highest honors given to teachers and scholars at the university.

Awardees are nominated by current and former students, as well as by colleagues at Temple and other institutions. Among Temple’s school and colleges, the College of Science and Technology had the highest number of 2020 awardees. They are:

Paul W. Eberman Faculty Research Award John P. Perdew, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics and Chemistry

Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award Alexandra Krull Davatzes, associate professor of earth and environmental science

Provost’s Award for Teaching Excellence in General Education Robert-André F. Rarig, assistant professor of instruction, chemistry

Part-time Faculty Excellence in Teaching and Instruction Award Kevin C. Cannon, adjunct assistant professor of chemistry

Faculty Senate Outstanding Faculty Service Award Paul S. LaFollette Jr., associate professor of computer and information sciences

Mathematician part of $3.5M project to improve traffic flow and fuel savings

BY GREG FORNIA

Benjamin Seibold, a mathematics associate professor, is part of a major effort using connected and autonomous vehicle technology to smooth traffic, calm congestion and reduce fuel use.

Seibold is part of the CIRCLES Project funded by a $3.5 million U.S. Department of Energy cooperative research agreement, which brings together researchers from UC Berkeley and the Institute of Transportation Studies Berkeley, Rutgers University-Camden, University of Arizona, Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT).

Researchers will use a limited number of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) on highways to study their impacts on traffic. The approach focuses on a new energy-aware theory that suggests by placing a small number of CAVs in the traffic stream as traffic controller, energy efficiency will improve for all vehicles in the traffic flow.

“Stop-and-go traffic is a ubiquitous feature of urban traffic flow, wasting energy and increasing emissions,” said Seibold, who

anticipates bringing aboard several Temple undergraduate and doctoral students to work on the project. “However, with a few modern and well-controlled automated vehicles, we may see an end to those stop-and-go waves, and instead get dense but smoothly flowing traffic.”

To evaluate the technology, the team will test the approach on the I-24 Smart Corridor in Tennessee. Managed by TDOT, the corridor integrates freeway and arterial roadway elements, along with physical, technological and operational improvements, to provide drivers accurate, real-time information and to actively manage traffic.

Since arriving at Temple in 2009, one of Seibold’s research foci has been traffic flow modeling, particularly “phantom” traffic jams or “jamitons.” According to Seibold, by synchronizing autonomous vehicles so that they can communicate and share certain types of information, such as traffic density and flow velocity, with each other, the vehicles could react in a way that alters the flow of traffic on the highway.