Crimson Quarterly - Spring 2018

crimson QUA RT E R LY Spring 2018

Volume 3, Issue 1

CALM IN THE STORM OU researchers look for ways to better measure Oklahoma’s deadly tornadoes – Page 12 Trae Young is college basketball’s biggest star – Page 7

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FIRST

impressions

Photo courtesy of Emily Zizelman

BY CLARA LINHOFF Students at the University of Oklahoma are given the opportunity to build something from nothing.

Whether it is part of their degree program or not, students can go to the Fabrication Lab located in the Tom Love Innovation Hub and create masterpieces.

Emily Zizelman is currently studying to get her Masters of Architecture from OU. She received her undergraduate degree at Ball

State University in Indiana and moved to Oklahoma City about a year ago with her husband. That’s when she decided to attend OU for more schooling.

The project she is most proud of is a light fixture designed to view medieval art, which is shown above.

Zizelman has always been interested in light and many of her pieces show it.

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light from the ceiling would mix with the red color of the walls to produce a warm light throughout the space.

The warm light produced was similar to the light of a candle, which is how medieval art was originally viewed.

“I really have enjoyed it here, and the technology in our lab is amazing,” Zizelman said.

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CONTENTS

Spring 2018 Volume 3, Issue 1

7 Hometown Hero Norman’s Trae Young is the face of college basketball.

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Measuring Chaos OU researchers are studying how to recognize tornado debris with radar.

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CQ Q&A Michael Detamore explains his vision for the School of Biomedical Engineering.

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Ebbs and Flows The biggest stories you may have missed, including updates on the OU presidential search.

Crimson Quarterly is a publication of University of Oklahoma Student Media. Nick Jungman, director of student media, authorized printing of 10,000 copies by University Printing Services at no cost to the taxpayers of the State of Oklahoma.

EDITORS Jesse Pound Editor-in-chief

McKenzie Lane

Maddy Payne

Copy Editor

Design Editor

CONTRIBUTORS Caitlyn Epes: photographer Paxson Haws: photographer Megan Ross: photographer

Emma Keith: writer George Stoia: writer Clara Linhoff: writer

Cover image by Megan Ross

Trae Young has reviatalized OU basketball.

Photo by Paxson Haws

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HOMETOWN

HERO

Trae Young slips between two Baylor defenders Jan. 30.

Photo by Caitlyn Epes

OU’s Trae Young stayed home and became a national name.

BY GEORGE STOIA Trae Young dribbled around defenders, the 6-foot goals at the Cleveland County Family YMCA hanging above him, as he dominated his 4 and 5-yearold counterparts.

His parents, Candice and Rayford, cheered him on, while other parents attempted to teach their kids the rules of the game. That YMCA gym is where the legend of Trae Young began.

He grew up in that gym, from watching his father play in the weekend men’s league to working out there until his senior year of high school.

Practically born and raised with a basketball in his hands, Young dominated his peers at a young age, playing up in elementary P.E. classes. He

started playing AAU ball in fifth grade, traveling every weekend to play in tournaments. When he eventually reached high school, Norman North knew it was getting a special player.

Young was a standout there, and while he still has a long a career ahead of him, his name will always be remembered in those halls.

“I think he left the legacy of the greatest Norman North player of all time,” Norman North assistant coach Jake Rudd said.

Fifteen years after first stepping onto that YMCA court, Young sat in a Norman North’s auditorium, wearing an all black outfit accented by golden shoes on and a

golden chain hanging out of his hoodie. He waited patiently for his turn to speak, listening as Norman North’s athletic director Courtney Norton and basketball coach Bryan Merritt talked about the exceptional player and man Young has become. Finally, the mic was handed to Young to announce the biggest decision of his life.

“This has been a long process for me, and a lot of ups and downs, but in the end, I came to a place of peace,” Young said that day. “That place of peace for me, in the fall of 2017, will be at the University of Oklahoma.”

Nine months later, and 4.9 miles down the road, Young stepped onto the Lloyd Noble

8 Center for the first time in a Sooners’ uniform. The freshman phenomenon that decided to stay home was prepared to make his college debut in the arena he grew up going to.

He dazzled immediately, dropping 15 points and 10 assists as the Sooners cruised to a win over Omaha.

Since that season opener in November, Young has become the face of college basketball, putting together breathtaking performances night-in and night-out. He willed Oklahoma into the top-10 in the middle of the season, becoming the frontrunner for national player of the year. He’s brought life back into the Lloyd Noble Center, helping turn a football school into a basketball school.

Young has done more than anyone imagined he would at Oklahoma in his freshman season, becoming exactly what

Trae’s Greatest Hits Nov. 26: Young scores 43 points as OU beats Oregon in the PK80 Invitational.

Dec. 16: Young‘s doubledouble leads the way as the Sooners knock off then-No. 3 Wichita State on the road.

Dec: 19: Young ties the NCAA records for assists in a game with 22 as OU romps over Northwestern State.

Jan. 3: Young flirts with a triple-double as OU scores 109 in a win over Oklahoma State.

Jan. 23: After national criticism for taking too many shots, Young scores 26 points on just nine field goal attempts as the Sooners upset Kansas in Norman.

Source: SoonerSports

he set out to be – a hometown hero.

“There’s a comfort for Trae at the Lloyd Noble Center,” Candice said. “It feels like home for him.”

A year before committing to the Sooners, Young made a commitment to the city of Norman. Following his junior year of high school, he made the decision to stay at Norman North for his senior season, passing up multiple opportunities to play at a prep school to better prepare him for college basketball. He wanted to be around his family for one more year and win a state championship for the city he grew up in.

“As a mom, you’re never ready to let your kid leave the house, but I didn’t want to see him go his senior year,” Candice said. “I got him for one more year, so I guess it all worked out.”

One of his first offers came before his decision to stay at North – from his father, Rayford’s, alma mater, Texas Tech University. Playing four years at Tech, Rayford had been in Young’s shoes not too long ago.

“I always said my job as a father is to give him all the pros and cons of each school and let him make the decision,” Rayford said. “I just didn’t want him to choose a school just because he felt like he owed it to someone, or he felt like he had to stay home. I left the choice up to him and he chose the right school for him that gave him the right fit.”

Soon after receiving his first

Trae Young may give Oklahoma coach Lon Kruger his second Wooden Award winner in the last three years.

Photo by Paxson Haws.

offer, Young was picking up offers from just about every school in the country, with letters in the mail and phone calls coming each day.

The biggest names in college basketball came looking for him: Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Arizona.

They all wanted Young, telling him he could be the next John Wall or Mario Chalmers or Kyrie Irving. While being the next great player at a historic program was appealing to Young, something about being a hometown hero always drew him back toward Norman.

His decision eventually came easy to him.

“He was trying to figure what was going to be the best fit,” Candice said. “I know that he did exactly what he wanted.”

Days before announcing his commitment to Oklahoma, Trae Young made a few phone calls to let coaches know his decision. Each call grew in difficulty, as he told coaches that had been recruiting him since middle school that he wouldn’t be playing for their school.

He worked his way down the list, eventually reaching a coach that had nearly as many

9 Big 12 conference titles as Young had years on Earth – Kansas’ Bill Self.

“That was tough,” Young said. “That was the toughest phone call in my recruitment, telling him I was going somewhere else.” Self and coaches around the country knew the caliber of talent Young possessed. But Young stayed home, choosing the school he grew up loving. Some questioned him, while others praised him, but Young knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t need anyone’s approval but his own, confident in the choice he made.

Today, Young still visits his old high school. Both his sisters are following in his footsteps, and as they begin to make their own name, Young will be right

there to witness it.

“He’s a family person, so being around his sisters and little brother and his parents, I think that was a huge factor in his decision,” Rudd said. “It could be really easy for him to not come around and move on with his life, but he’s still around and he’s still a part of the community and coming to watch his sisters at Norman North. It would be very easy for him to not do that, and he makes the time to do that.”

Young may only be just a 16-minute drive to the house he grew up, but he still is having the full college experience.

“He is the typical college student,” Candice said. “Yes — he’s on campus and in our hometown … but he doesn’t have to worry about running into us. He doesn’t have to

worry about us stalking him outside his dorm room. He gets to be a college student.”

Young bet on himself when he made that call to Self and has reaped the benefits since.

He’s become a magician on the court — with a basketball as his wand and Sooner Nation as his audience. He knew the pressure that would come with wearing the crimson and cream, and he isn’t shying away from it.

He’s put his school, city and state on his back.

“Just being able to not only represent Norman but the state of Oklahoma — it’s exciting,” Candice said. “It’s fun for him.

He takes it all in, and he wants to represent the city and state well.”

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Trae Young attemps a shot against Texas on Feb. 17. Young tied the NCAA record for assists in a game earlier this season.

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12 David Bodine leads research on tornado debris at OU. Photo by Megan Ross

MEASURING CHAOS Researchers at OU’s radar center are studying debris from tornadoes.

BY JESSE POUND To study the chaos caused by tornadoes and the sharp, deadly debris they hurl through the air, David Bodine and his team of OU researchers needed to see how things looked while stationary surrounded a room made of foam.

An anechoic foam chamber – lined on the inside with red, blue and yellow pointy, foam blocks about a foot long – is just one tool used in this research project, which began four years ago and which Bodine is trying to have continued.

The goal of the project is to help scientists design new radar that can better deal with debris, said Robert Palmer, the director of the Advanced Radar Research Center.

“When, we’re looking at

weather, we want to see the rain drops and the actual weather,” Palmer said. “We don’t really want to see the debris – the debris is like a contamination.”

Debris items are placed on a podium above a sea of blue blocks in the chamber.

Bodine and his team study how radar signals are altered by debris that are often picked up by the twisters so familiar to Oklahoma. The foam blocks absorb the radar waves that are sent out, allowing for a clean reading of the objects.

One surprising find for Bodine is that changing the frequency of the radar signals can change how much of the storm the radar can detect – bypassing the debris that was stumping the

radar machines.

“If you change the frequency, you might see all these big particles up in the tornado, but if you use a really high frequency, it kind of mitigates the amount those big debris particles have on the return radar signal,” Bodine said.

Another tool used for the project is a radar simulator.

With the simulator, tornadoes appear on a computer screen as a whirl of blue and green dots, showing rain and flying debris.

The simulator allows Bodine and other scientists to model how the debris might appear in different types of tornadoes. Bodine explained that tornadoes can act in many different ways, with some having an updraft of air

13 on the outside of the tornado, some having the updraft on the inside and some essentially having several smaller tornadoes within the larger one.

The simulator was modified to make dualpolarized measurements, sending radar signals in two dimensions to better measure the particles in the air. This was the subject of a 2017 paper, with Bodine and Palmer among the coauthors, that was published in an a journal by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Knowing what the debris looks like is not just helpful in designing radar to avoid detecting it in the first place. The National Weather Service can look at the debris signatures high in the clouds to evaluate how much damage the storm is causing, informing first responders about what they will face.

“The radar beam goes above the ground, and because the earth curves away, the farther away the radar is from, the higher up you’re seeing in altitude,” Bodine said. “So we usually are seeing rotation up in the storm, but we don’t know if it’s on the ground ... but if you can see that it’s lofting debris, you immediately know there’s debris there.”

Palmer who has a doctorate in electrical engineering from OU, came back to Norman in 2004.

Seeing that he had a team of people to work on radar,

Palmer started the Advanced Radar Research Center in 2005, and the center now sits next door to the National Weather Center.

The National Science Foundation has provided more than $880,000 to the project, starting in September 2013, according to the foundation’s website. Palmer originally lead the project, with Bodine, then a doctoral student, assisting. Bodine applied in January for more funding to keep the project going and said they should hear back in six months.

“We have all the data to do that, but we haven’t really started synthesizing all of those results together, so that’s one of the things that we hope to do in the future,” Bodine said.

One of the criteria the foundation looks at when determining which projects to fund is relevance to the public, Bodine said, a plus for tornado research applications.

“The whole goal of this

project is to actually do real measurements, but we need to understand them because they are so messy,” Palmer said.

The project also serves as a recruiting tool for engineering and meteorology graduate students, Bodine said. He also leads mobile radar units mounted to trucks to get measurements of local storms, giving the researchers something to compare with the simulations.

The project serves as a culmination of years of work for science students who spend untold hours trudging through the theoretical.

“You have to slug through thousands of equations to get educated, but at some point you want to use it for something,” Palmer said.

“So being able to go out in the field and making measurements on a real tornado is just very exciting to those kind of folks.”

David Bodine shows what debris looks like in a computer simulation of a tornado.

Photo by Megan Ross

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A conversation with Michael Detamore, director of the School of Biomedical Engineering.

Michael Detamore said his school is looking to add four faculty positions by next fall.

Photo by Paxson Haws

BY EMMA KEITH Michael Detamore is living his dream.

The founding director of OU’s Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering, Detamore arrived at the school for its inaugural semester in fall 2016. Detamore’s arrival at the school was, for him, an unprecedented opportunity: the chance to lead an entirely new program that had already received Board of Regents approval and significant funding.

While fall 2016 saw a group of 55 students and six faculty involved in the college, the biomedical engineering circle has grown significantly since its inception. Detamore said the program currently serves about 170 students and is looking to fill four more faculty positions by fall 2018. By fall 2019, Detamore hopes to have moved the program into Gallogly Hall, which is currently under

construction, and the Valero Lecture Hall, a multipurpose space used to host different events within Gallogly.

Where Detamore once saw “under-tapped potential” and “the opportunity of a lifetime,” he now sees a program teeming with talented students pursuing ambitious work.

This transcript was edited for length and clarity.

How have you seen the program develop since you’ve been over it?

I would say the exciting thing about the past 18 months has been the creation of our undergraduate program with freshmen, sophomores and juniors now active in the program, and the hiring of new faculty, including two assistant professors of practice and two new new tenure track professors doing research

on cancer down at (the OU Health Sciences Center) ... I’ve been really excited about the unprecedented collaboration with the OU Health Sciences Center — they’ve been a tremendous ally.

Can you talk a little bit about what that collaboration has looked like?

They have outstanding researchers there, and they also have world-class clinicians treating patients — so there are different ways we can collaborate. One is a clinician has their own idea of a way to improve a treatment for a patient and they bring us the idea, and we can bring that to our undergraduates to help reduce that idea to practice and potentially lead to a commercial product to help patients.

The program will have its first class of seniors come through in the fall. What do you think you’ve learned about these students and the program this past year and a half?

They are brilliant and motivated and resourceful … they’ve gone and done research abroad in Japan and Portugal and Ireland ... five of our students have already done industry internships ... in Oklahoma City. And then, a couple of students have also helped to 3D print a hand for a young boy in junior high … so they’re doing all kinds of exciting, amazing things.

Have you been at all surprised about student interest in the program so far?

One think I can say struck me but didn’t surprise me was that probably over half the students started out as premed, but a lot of the students are finding themselves really interested in the creative side of medicine, and developing new technologies and the driving of technologies forward, and have kind of gravitated more toward interest in graduate school than in medicine.

With the biomedical engineering program, you’ve been involved every step of the way, including meeting with students to discuss the program. How do you think that hands-on approach has worked out so far?

I think the personal connection is essential — especially for students in our inaugural classes. As you

23 may know, last year we had freshmen who came directly in and sophomores who maybe transferred in from other majors, so two classes that together are the inaugural classes, really, and they will establish the culture for a generation to come. And if they are doing research abroad, if they’re doing study abroad, if they are doing industry internships and summer research programs and working with clinicians and doing research across campus, then the future generations will be like, ‘well, everybody’s doing it,’ and it’ll seem normal.

Moving forward into these next few years after these early successes, what’s your vision for the program and ultimate goals during your time here?

My vision is to raise the Stephenson school to be a nationally-recognized, top biomedical engineering department with outstanding faculty, excellent students and a record of translational accomplishments that help to drive healthcare technology forward. So, I would like to see early engagement of students as soon as the freshman year, and design experiences and regular partnerships with clinicians at the Health Sciences Center and potentially expansion of the department into a phase two that could reach up to 25 faculty or more in time.

News you may have missed Jan. 1: Oklahoma football team falls to Georgia in the Rose Bowl.

Feb. 5: OU faculty members release open letter asking for more transparency in the presidential search.

Feb. 9: Daniel Pullin, dean of the Price College of Business, tells The OU Daily that he has applied to be the next OU president.

Feb. 12: Step Up Oklahoma, a state budget plan that included a pay raise for teachers, fails in the Oklahoma State House.

Feb. 13: OU students join educators from around Oklahoma at the State Capitol to rally for Higher Education Day. Feb. 13: Rep. Tom Cole tells The OU Daily that he declined to be considered for the next OU president, joining Oklahoma City University President Robert Henry in choosing not to pursue the job.

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