Capstone Engineer - Fall 2020

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COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

First and foremost, I hope you, your family, and your loved ones are doing well. I know many of you are facing tremendous challenges during this trying time.

We have been working diligently to ensure our students continue to receive the quality education we routinely deliver at The University of Alabama.

I am very, very pleased with how our faculty, staff, students and alumni have responded to this challenge with passion and professionalism.

A couple of faculty members, Dr. Derek Williamson and Dr. Beth Todd, have already begun a study on best practices and lessons learned in moving rapidly to online course offerings and the impact that has on engineering education. It will be exciting to see what they learn from this experience and how it will impact the future of distance learning.

As so many have, several faculty and staff juggled parenting, teaching and working with children and spouses all in the same home using limited equipment and a strained internet connection among other unforeseen road bumps. This has been a challenge for so many, but as engineers, we adapt and forge through to the best of our ability. I commend all who took on these extra responsibilities with pride and resilience.

I am especially proud of the alumni and students who have offered their services to help others throughout the pandemic. It is an inspiration to see their innovative thinking and use of engineering skills to answer the call to support their neighbors in new and thoughtful ways.

It’s humbling to think of all the students had to endure and continue to endure during this time.

Some have had to work full time to support their families while others have gotten sick and had a long road back to recovery. I empathize with each story and hope we can be a support system for our students.

I have encouraged our students to be diligent, maintain good communication with their professors and to monitor healthinfo.ua.edu for all pertinent information. Communication is key now more than ever.

As you might expect, this time has been a bit of a challenge, but I believe we have navigated these waters successfully. I would imagine that we can ALL use a bit of understanding during these times.

In all my years here, this is the most unusual set of circumstances I have seen at The University of Alabama. Despite the challenges we have faced, I know The University of Alabama —and in particular the College of Engineering —will continue with great momentum in fulfilling our mission. I can say this because I have seen the level of caring and commitment our faculty and staff members bring to their job.

Please know I fully appreciate you.

Dr. Charles L. Karr Dean

CAPSTONE ENGINEERING SOCIETY 205-348-2452 Howard Allen Faulkner, Chair, Board of Directors • Charles L. Karr, Ph.D., Dean, College of Engineering • Liz Moore, Manager, Capstone Engineering Society and Assistant Director of Alumni Engagement • Alana Norris, Editor • Alana Norris, Adam Jones, Bryant Welbourne, Arayna Wooley, Joe Daniel, Writers • Issue No. 60 • Capstone Engineer is published in the spring and fall by the Capstone Engineering Society • Joshua Clayton, Designer • Alana Norris, Proofreader • Mary Kathryn Carpenter, Bryan Hester, Zach Riggins, Matthew Wood, Photography • Address correspondence to the editor: The University of Alabama, Capstone Engineering Society, College of Engineering, Box 870200, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0200 • Visit the College of Engineering website at www.eng.ua.edu • The University of Alabama is an equal-opportunity educational institution/employer. MC9487

FEATURES PANDEMIC PARENTING

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Faculty balance family and work from home

KEEPING THE ENGINEER RUNNING

Alumna and student transform their daily lives to serve

VIRTUAL REALITY

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Two faculty members study effectiveness of online engineering education

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Students demonstrate strength in the face of adversity

REMOTE CONTROL Unit operations lab goes remote

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Noteworthy news and research

Staff steadfast in supporting students and alumni

INGENUITY IN A CRISIS

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Events from around the college

ALUMNI DYNAMICS

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IN MEMORY

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NOTEWORTHY NEWS AND RESEARCH FROM UA ENGINEERING

cut using a waterjet to form the face shield and printers were used to make the headbands.

The Cube, along with individual partnerships, produced more than 1,000 face shields with headbands for UMC and DCH and delivered more than 100 in early April, said Dr. Ken Fridley, Engineering’s senior associate dean for administration.

Dr. Robert Morgan, professor of marketing and also director of the STEM Path to the MBA and CREATE Path to the MBA programs, reached out to an alumnus of the Culverhouse Executive MBA Program who works for PPG Industries in Huntsville, Alabama, that provided the plastic needed for the face shields.

McKenna Marino, a sophomore studying biology in the STEM Path to MBA Program, assembles face shields for health care workers at The Cube.

UA Helping Fabricate Protection for Health Care Workers The University of Alabama community came together to help provide 3D-printed personal protective equipment, or PPE, for regional health care workers.

Two groups across three colleges on campus produced face shields for health care professionals at University Medical Center, DCH Health System in Tuscaloosa and UAB Hospital. PPE such as masks, gloves and gowns are in short supply across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

McKenna Marino, a STEM Path to the MBA student, went to get the plastic and helped recruit other local students in the program to assemble the PPE on campus.

Along with this project, the Alabama Productivity Center, an outreach center part of UA’s Culverhouse College of Business, also began working to provide headbands for face shields used at UAB Hospital. The APC’s two 3D printers were enlisted by the Alabama Power Company’s Technology Applications Center.

Jody Beck with APC and his wife Sadie Beck, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, printed the headbands at home and delivered them to Birmingham.

Realizing the need for PPE locally at UMC and DCH, Dr. Richard Friend, dean of the UA College of Community Health Sciences that operates UMC, formed a partnership with the UA College of Engineering and the STEM Path to the MBA Program based out of the Culverhouse College of Business to print flexible headbands to attach to plastic face shields fabricated using UA equipment.

The College of Engineering’s makerspace, The Cube, which houses 3D printers and other manufacturing equipment, was used to make the PPE. Large sheets of plastic were

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Headbands for face shields are created through 3D printers at The Cube, part of the UA College of Engineering.

He also volunteered at a drive-thru testing site, preparing people to be swabbed. The majority of people at this site tested positive, he said.

In both roles, Glidden said extra safety precautions were taken; he felt safe. He urged others to take the quarantine and social distancing seriously.

He was supposed to be in Colorado for part of April working with the UA Remote Sensing Center in a research project, but said he was glad to be in this role.

John Glidden III volunteered as an EMT during the spring in his hometown of Closter, New Jersey. Photo courtesy of John Glidden III.

UA Senior Working Pandemic Front Lines in NYC Area

UA Kick-Starts Six Projects Related to COVID-19 and Future Pandemics

Although this is not what John Glidden III envisioned for the home stretch of his senior year, he used the change in circumstances to help his hometown get through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Six projects designed to deepen understanding of the coronavirus pandemic and future pandemics and positively influence society will receive seed funding from The University of Alabama.

Instead of being in Tuscaloosa wrapping up his final classes as a student in aerospace engineering and prepping to start a job with Lockheed Martin, Glidden was in Closter, New Jersey, volunteering as both an EMT for Closter Volunteer Ambulance and Rescue Corps, a non-profit ambulance service, and at a drive-thru virus testing site.

The projects come from across disciplines on campus, and were selected through the University’s Joint Institute Pandemic Pilot Project, sponsored by the UA Office for Research and Economic Development and UA’s research institutes.

Located about 15 minutes away from New York City, an early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., Closter is dealing with cases from the novel coronavirus as well. Glidden worked for the only 911 ambulance service in town, and the majority of calls were related to COVID-19, he said.

Glidden started volunteering with the ambulance service in high school, earning his EMT certification just after graduating. He worked with them when he was home from college. When he found himself unexpectedly home for nearly two months before his move to Orlando, Florida, to start work with Lockheed Martin, he returned to the ambulance service.

Some of the other EMTs and other personnel with the service are in groups vulnerable to COVID-19 and some got sick, he said.

Support for the projects comes from the Alabama Transportation Institute, Alabama Water Institute, Alabama Life Research Institute and the UA Cyber Initiative. The effort was guided by the strategic plan for the Office for Research and Economic Development that encourages interdisciplinary and transformative research.

Along with the viability of projects to garner external funding after being established, the review process of proposals emphasized a project’s potential to sustain beyond the current global pandemic stemming from COVID-19 and scale to other large challenges.

Two of the projects have ties to the UA College of Engineering: • Development of a model to track

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NOTEWORTHY NEWS AND RESEARCH FROM UA ENGINEERING

transmission of infectious diseases that can help develop testing and quarantine strategies that contain infections without locking down a region. It could also evaluate the effectiveness of stay-at-home orders. The project is led by Dr. Jun Liu, assistant professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering.

• Assessing emergency messaging used during the pandemic in Alabama and the perceptions of the public and decisionmakers of the response to messaging.

Interviews, surveys and workshops with emergency managers around the state will help develop a pandemic and catastrophic event planning guide for dissemination to government officials. The project will be led by Dr. Laura Myers, director and senior research scientist at the Center for Advanced Public Safety.

AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety Supports UA Study Responders to traffic incidents or crashes can be injured – or worse – while resolving the incident. Often personnel are not able to comply with safety guidelines.

Transportation researchers at The University of Alabama are leading an effort to understand safety for those who respond to traffic incidents. The hope is to prevent injuries or death.

service and towing, among others. Traffic incidents can include motor vehicle crashes, fires, medical emergencies, disabled vehicles, law enforcement activities and other unplanned events that cause injuries, property damage or traffic delays.

Emergency Responder Safety Institute’s 2019 Responder Safety Report found vehicles struck and killed 44 emergency responders.

UA researchers seek to identify and evaluate compliance with safety protocols and use of safety equipment while understanding the reasons for situations of non-compliance.

They will first work with ALDOT Regional Traffic Management Centers and the Alabama Traffic Incident Management program to gather data through focus groups on existing practices and their effectiveness.

This information will be used to devise a survey to be distributed to around 1,000 traffic incident responders nationwide.

With data on effective safety measures and why responders might not use them in certain situations, UA researchers will work with the Alabama Service Assistance Patrol to implement some of the measures and possibly study their use through dash cams.

Dr. Jun Liu and Dr. Alexander Hainen, both assistant professors of civil, construction and environmental engineering, along with staff members from the Alabama Transportation Institute are on the project.

The work is funded by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, and it will be used by the organization to improve safety and provide information and best practices to first responders.

UA researchers will also work with the Alabama Department of Transportation and national stakeholders in the area of traffic incident management to disseminate the results.

Responders can include highway assistance patrol, police, fire, emergency medical

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Responders can include highway assistance patrol, police, fire, emergency medical service and towing, among others.

Southern U.S. Hotspots for Severe Consequences of Flash Floods The worst region for flash floods in the continental United States is likely the Southwest, according to a recent analysis of flash floods by The University of Alabama.

Using hydrologic data, along with socioeconomic information, researchers at the UA Center for Complex Hydrosystems, led by center director Dr. Hamid Moradkhani, mapped the hotspots for flash floods.

They found the most severe effects from flash floods occur in a string of counties along the U.S.Mexico border from Texas to California, including areas much further north in New Mexico, Arizona and even Nevada, according to the study published in Scientific Reports.

Many counties in Southwest states are not well equipped to prevent or recover from damages

caused by flash floods even though the region has less frequent flash floods than other areas of the country, particularly the Southeast.

Overall, the poor socio-economic indicators in the Southern half of the U.S. affects the region’s response to flash floods events, the study found.

The Southeast states, particularly the Deep South, are hotspots for frequent and longer duration flash floods alongside poor socioeconomic status, which reveals the region suffers from lack of infrastructure and sufficient resources to respond to more frequent flash flood events.

Flash floods come from intense rainfall accumulating rapidly, and they are among the deadliest natural disasters in the world.

A community’s flood risk stems from not only the intensity of rainfall and streamflow but also the people and assets exposed to potential flash floods and their lingering effects. UA researchers used a wide-range of information

Flash flood hazard characteristics converted from gauge station to the county-scale show the Southwest U.S. is a hotspot for severe risks from flash floods.

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NOTEWORTHY NEWS AND RESEARCH FROM UA ENGINEERING

sources at the county level across the country.

The study identified the critical and noncritical regions of the country, finding the Southwest experiences severe flash flooding with a high magnitude of damage. More counties in the Southern portions of the nation are highly vulnerable to flash flood damage, while the Northern Great Plains region of the country is not a critical area.

Emergency managers and flood insurance agencies can use the data to draw resources and attention to high-risk areas ahead of expected intense rainfall, said Moradkhani, the Alton N. Scott Chair Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

UA to Offer Degree in Cyber Security In response to the growing need for professionals skilled in the protection of digital information, The University of Alabama will offer a degree in cyber security.

Earlier this year, the University’s board of trustees approved the Bachelor of Science degree, which is being offered this fall. The degree will be housed in the UA department of computer science within the College of Engineering.

UA will be the first institution in the state to offer an undergraduate cyber security degree within a computer science department, making UA’s track unique in its focus on the technical aspects of protecting digital information from cyber attacks. In addition, students in the degree will be exposed to the hardware side of the field through required computer engineering courses.

This program is designed to provide a rigorous, technical degree that imparts the necessary knowledge, skills and motivations to protect and defend digital information from attacks. It will share many courses with the computer science degree and include

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new cyber security courses developed for the program.

Cyber security is one of the fastest growing fields in the country. In Alabama, demand for these jobs is also on the rise, particularly in industry sectors critical to the state’s economy, including military and defense contractors.

UA cyber security students will gain the specific knowledge needed to be on the forefront of designing, identifying and proposing new security strategies. The new degree program will boost students’ abilities to land jobs, such as chief information security officers, security architects, security engineers, vulnerability assessors, information security analysts and security consultants.

Cyber Security Scholarships Available to UA Students The University of Alabama will provide scholarships through a national program aimed at recruiting the next generation of cyber security professionals interested in government service.

UA received a five-year $3.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to provide scholarships to UA students interested in pursuing government careers in cyber security. The scholarships are offered through the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service, SFS, which is supported by the NSF

and the Department of Homeland Security.

UA’s program is called SFS@BAMA. The program provides a full-tuition scholarship along with a stipend – $25,000 annually for undergraduate students and $34,000 annually for graduate students – along with an allowance for books, certifications and professional travel.

UA students chosen for the scholarship program must complete a summer internship and obtain employment in a governmental cyber security job after graduation for at least as many years as they receive the scholarship. Students will attend an annual job fair in Washington, D.C. and receive additional support for identifying summer internships and post-graduation employment.

ALRI Awards Funds to Faculty to Address Neurodegenerative Diseases There are no cures for many neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Research designed to elucidate target mechanisms as well as drug discovery research are important and are areas The University of Alabama is seeing grow.

The President’s Support Fund for Faculty Development, Innovation and Research, supported by the Merrymac-McKinley Foundation, is managed by the Alabama Life Research Institute. ALRI’s mission is to lead interdisciplinary bio-psychosocial research that seeks to investigate the human condition at all levels, from the molecular to the environmental.

All ALRI research efforts – from the study of genetic anomalies to governmental policy, from drug discovery to prosthetic design, from education to behavior change – seek to improve life, through the reduction of morbidity and mortality. ALRI has already identified research efforts aiming to address specific unmet needs, namely, rural health and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Dr. Jeffrey Carver and Dr. Travis Atkison from UA, center, are recognized by Karen A. Marrongelle and Dr. F. Fleming Crim with the National Science Foundation on the left and, on the right, Bradford J. Willke from the Department of Homeland Security and Veronica Villalobos from the Office of Personnel Management.

In support of the goals of the President’s Support Fund, ALRI directed awards to promising junior faculty doing research in the area of neurodegenerative diseases, with the objective to both accelerate possible discoveries and to position the faculty to be highly competitive for future grant support from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Lukasz Cielsa, assistant professor of biological sciences, along with his collaborator Dr. Yuping Bao, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, are two of the three UA faculty who will use funds awarded to support basic science research in the area of Dr. Yuping Bao neurodegeneration.

Ciesla and Bao received $25,000 from the Merrymac-McKinley Foundation to support their research exploring neuroprotective therapy to activate and restore neural function for Alzheimer’s disease by using plant extracts and synthetic nanoparticles. Ciesla searches

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NOTEWORTHY NEWS AND RESEARCH FROM UA ENGINEERING

for compounds found in plants likely to have neuroprotective qualities while Bao tests the efficacy of these drugs using nanotechnology screening.

ALRI Names First Fellows to Address Rural, Underserved Communities Eight faculty members have been selected as Alabama Life Research Institute Fellows at The University of Alabama as part of ALRI’s commitment to establishing a foundation of collaboration within the University. Two of the fellows are engineering faculty members.

The inaugural fellows, selected from a large number of candidates, come from across the UA campus. Fellows were chosen as representatives of diverse fields of study to create an interdisciplinary research environment that offers multiple perspectives on the ALRI mission.

The ALRI serves as a focal point for interdisciplinary bio-psychosocial research that seeks to investigate the human condition at all levels, from the molecular to the environmental, collaborating across the University, as well as with peer Dr. Edward Sazonov institutions, health care corporations, governmental agencies, community-based organizations and other concerned individuals.

Drs. John Higginbotham and John Lochman will serve as senior fellows and act as mentors to the eight faculty fellows and as advisers to Dr. Sharlene Newman, ALRI executive director, as the program expands.

NASA Selects UA Engineering Research Team for New Space Travel Program NASA has chosen The University of Alabama as one of 14 universities in its new program to innovate space travel.

UA’s research team will create a hybrid rotating detonation engine to optimize rocket capability.

Dr. Ajay Agrawal, a professor of mechanical engineering at The University of Alabama, will be the principal investigator.

Over a three-year period, the team will work on research to develop new propulsion concepts with $550,000 in grants.

The NASA program features six different topics of space Dr. Ajay Agrawal research, UA’s topic being concept development for rotating detonation rocket engines. Agrawal said his team is working to enhance the performance of rocket engines by transforming the chemical energy in fuel into momentum.

Agrawal began his academic career working with NASA in the microgravity program. He has been funded by NASA for nearly 25 years and looks forward to continuing to work on this exciting new project.

The ALRI Fellows are from five different colleges, including two from the College of Engineering.

Dr. Xiangrong Shen

• Dr. Edward Sazonov, professor of electrical & computer engineering • Dr. Xiangrong Shen, professor of mechanical engineering

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Dr. Richard Branam, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics at UA, is the co-investigator on the project. Both professors will engage and oversee undergraduate and graduate engineering students in this research.

Four UA Professors Selected for Early Career Awards Four professors at The University of Alabama received national recognition early in their careers for leading-edge research that will advance knowledge and enhance the educational experience. Two of those faculty members are in the UA College of Engineering.

Both professors were selected by the National Science Foundation for a CAREER Award, one of the nation’s most prestigious recognition of top-performing young scientists.

The grants allow each researcher to train and motivate a new generation of scientists and engineers not only at UA through instruction and hands-on lab work, but also though outreach efforts to schools and community.

An NSF CAREER Award will fund projects

by Dr. Qiang Huang and Dr. Evan Wujcik, both assistant professors of chemical and biological engineering.

The NSF Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Program is a Foundationwide activity offering the most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty with the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

Currently, 29 UA faculty from disciplines across campus have received NSF CAREER Awards during their tenure.

Huang’s CAREER Award will explore using new electrochemical methods to fabricate superconducting materials for advanced applications such as quantum computers, medical imaging and Dr. Qiang Huang other superconducting magnetic technology. His lab is developing new chemistry and methods to enable the manufacturing of superconducting materials, and the project should provide a fuller understanding of these methods' impact on superconductivity.

For Wujcik, the NSF award funds continued experiments with an elastic material developed in his lab that conducts electricity and, more importantly, can heal itself, even if torn apart. The material is a Dr. Evan Wujcik promising advancement in the field of electronic skins, or e-skins, and wearable sensors, where scientists are working to make sensors lighter, smaller and less intrusive than currently used electronics. A provisional patent is filed to cover the chemical composition of the material.

Two UA Faculty Members Named Fulbright Scholars Two University of Alabama faculty members received Fulbright Scholar Grants for the current academic year. One of those faculty members is in the UA College of Engineering.

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers approximately 470 teaching, research or combination teaching and research awards in more than 125 countries.

Dr. Glenn Tootle, associate professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, was awarded a Fulbright Teaching and Research Scholar Award to the University of Dr. Glenn Tootle Trento in Italy. He will teach courses in paleohydrology and hydroclimatology, focusing on Alpine watersheds in the region.

Tootle will collaborate with UniTrento faculty and students to evaluate critical water resources challenges including the development of tree-ring based reconstructions of streamflow and snowpack; identification of climatic drivers of streamflow and snowpack; and long leadtime forecasting of streamflow for water supply. He will concurrently conduct research in these areas and work on developing an exchange program with students from

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SENIOR SCHOLAR

UniTrento, UA and the nearby University of Innsbruck where he has led a study abroad program since 2012.

Steven Jones civil, construction & environmental engineering

President’s Faculty Research Award Recipients Recognized Three civil, construction and environmental engineering faculty have been recognized for UA Faculty Research Awards.

The 2020 Faculty Research Day Awards Ceremony was canceled after the University transitioned to limited business operations.

Virtual poster presentations and scholarly information for the nine faculty members receiving this year’s President’s Faculty Research Award are available at ovpred.ua.edu/faculty-research-day, and each will be recognized at the 2021 Faculty Research Day event.

Faculty Research Day highlights and celebrates excellence in research, creativity and scholarship by honoring faculty from across campus. It is also intended to increase awareness and generate enthusiasm for scholarship among faculty as the University advances its research enterprise and its impact.

Sponsored by the offices of the President and Vice President for Research and Economic Development, the awards go to outstanding faculty researchers from across UA’s colleges and schools.

Dr. Jialai Wang

Faculty Research Day also recognizes recent inductees into the National Academy of Inventors. This year’s inductee is Dr. Jialai Wang, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering.

The 2020 President’s Faculty Research Award recipients in engineering were: EMERGING SCHOLAR Alexander Hainen civil, construction & environmental engineering

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UA Names New Director of Center for Sustainable Infrastructure The University of Alabama’s Center for Sustainable Infrastructure has named a new director.

Dr. Daan Liang, a professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, has taken the role as director of the CSI. The CSI is a research center on campus working to make infrastructures more sustainable, resilient and energy efficient to fight against natural hazards.

Dr. Daan Liang A collection of engineering faculty work with the center along with graduate students working as research assistants.

Computer Science Professor Named IEEE Fellow A professor in the College of Engineering has been recognized by an international organization for his extensive research on WiFi standardization.

Dr. Yang Xiao, a computer science professor, has been named an IEEE Fellow for the class of 2020.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers is one of the world’s leading professional associations for advancing technology with more than 400,000 members in 160 countries. Becoming an IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership.

Xiao is being recognized for his work with wireless medium access control as well as his various research topics.

Xiao has been a member of IEEE for 20 years and is appreciative of this distinguished international honor.

Becoming an IEEE Fellow is highly recognized and serves as an Dr. Yang Xiao outstanding professional accomplishment. Members can be considered for the award if they have made significant contributions as a research engineer/scientist, application engineer/practitioner, technical leader or educator.

ECE Assistant Professor Named a SPIE DCS Rising Researcher The International Society for Optics and Photonics, or SPIE, has recognized a member of The University of Alabama’s engineering faculty as one of the 13 Rising Researchers in the 2020 class.

Dr. Sevgi Gurbuz, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, was recognized for her research in radar microDoppler signature classification. Gurbuz has worked with radar research for many Dr. Sevgi Gurbuz years and directs the Laboratory of Computational Intelligence for Radar at UA.

ChBE Professor Wins International Membranes Research Award An engineering faculty member at The University of Alabama was recognized for his achievements as a young researcher.

Dr. Jason Bara, a professor of chemical and biological engineering, was given the 2019 Young Investigator Award by the journal Membranes published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute. The Young Investigator Award Dr. Jason Bara is a highly competitive international award that is only given to one applicant.

Bara received the award because of his research on the design of polymer materials for gas separation membranes. He has done membrane research for 15 years.

MDPI is a publisher that has over 200 journals in varying fields. The Membranes edition is a science and technology journal published monthly.

Other MDPI publications give out the Young Investigator Award each year, but 2019 was the first year the Membranes journal participated.

Recipients had to be under 40 years old.

AEM Assistant Professor Receives ION’s Samuel Burka Award

Recipients were selected based on their track record for leadership, technical contributions and communication abilities.

Dr. Jordan Larson, assistant professor in The University of Alabama’s aerospace engineering and mechanics department, was recently recognized by the Institute of Navigation, or ION, for his research efforts.

The award was presented during the virtual SPIE DCS Digital Forum instead of the previous planned conference in Anaheim, which was canceled due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Gurbuz was set to present two of three accepted papers at the DCS conference, including the paper affiliated with her Rising Research application, entitled “Crossfrequency training with adversarial learning for radar micro-Doppler signature classification.”

Dr. Jordan Larson

The Dr. Samuel M. Burka Award was presented to Larson and his co-authors, Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities,

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and Dr. Jason Rife of Tufts University, for their paper Gaussian-Pareto Overbounding of DGNSS Pseudoranges from CORS. The paper was published in the Spring 2019 Issue of NAVIGATION and was the foundational research for Larson’s doctoral dissertation thesis, which focuses on safety-critical navigation systems.

The publication’s editorial board evaluated all papers in NAVIGATION’s four seasonal editions throughout the year before choosing Larson’s work as the best technical paper of 2019 at the ION International Technical Meeting on Jan. 2124 in San Diego.

Council Recognizes Excellence in Community Engagement UA’s Council on Community-Based Partnerships recently recognized the outstanding achievements in communityengaged scholarship through its annual Excellence in Community Engagement Awards, announced virtually.

The awards are a culmination of the efforts of faculty and students working to fulfill the University’s teaching, research and service mission through partnerships with community groups.

Through granting seed funds, graduate fellowships, undergraduate scholarships, travel grants and a variety of other acknowledgements, the program annually recognizes faculty, staff, community partners and students who work to change the lives

of others through their engagement research efforts.

Top award recipients in engineering were: OUTSTANDING SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AWARD Dr. Kevin W. Whitaker, executive vice president and provost, was recognized for his superior leadership, exemplary efforts and outstanding vision.

DISTINGUISHED COMMUNITY ENGAGED SCHOLAR, FACULTY/STAFF Dr. Jeff Gray, a professor of computer science, is a national leader in computer science education and has worked tirelessly to bring computer science education to public schools over the past 20 years, with special attention to bringing these skills to underserved populations.

Twenty-five additional students, faculty, staff and community partners received awards, including engineering students and faculty:

OUTSTANDING STUDENT-INITIATED ENGAGEMENT EFFORT Dr. John Baker, Piper Daniels, Ian Noonan for UASpace, aerospace engineering and mechanics.

GRADUATE STUDENT FELLOWSHIP Jillian Maxcy-Brown, civil, construction and environmental engineering.

Although the 14th annual awards ceremony was postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Council plans to honor recipients in person at a later date. More details about the award winners can be found on the Council Awards website.

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Dr. Shahriar (Sean) Amini, associate professor, ME

Dr. Kasra Momeni, associate professor, ME

Dr. Mizanur Rahman, assistant professor, CCEE

Dr. Jiaqi (Jackey) Gong, associate professor, CS

Dr. Charles (Charlie) Monroe, associate professor, MTE

Dr. Tibor Szilvasi, assistant professor, ChBE

Dr. Hyun (Jin) Kim, assistant professor, ME

Dr. Lina Pu, assistant professor, CS

Dr. Mesfin Mekonnen, assistant professor, CCEE

Dr. Xinwu Qian, assistant professor, CCEE

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Parrish comes to UA from Mississippi State University where he served as the associate vice president for research and held a tenured appointment as professor of computer science and engineering. He was also the interim director for the National Strategic Planning and Analysis Research Center, one of MSU’s largest and most productive centers. He was responsible for facilitation of research among MSU’s academic and research stakeholders, with emphasis on transportation, data science and cybersecurity.

Dr. Allen Parrish (Mississippi State University)

Alabama Transportation Institute Names New Director Dr. Allen Parrish is returning to The University of Alabama as executive director of the Alabama Transportation Institute.

Parrish worked at UA for 26 years, including as the founding director of the UA Center for Advanced Public Safety. He left in 2016 to help start the cyber operations program at the U.S. Naval Academy.

He began working at UA’s ATI Feb. 17.

ATI serves as a planning, research and policy resource to advance a modern transportation system. This interdisciplinary institute enables UA to lead the way on emerging issues and serves as an independent resource that develops unbiased information for use by local, state and national leaders in developing transportation policy.

UA’s ATI has taken the lead role in researching and analyzing transportation challenges, issuing numerous publicly-available reports to external stakeholders in the state and at the national level to inform organizations, policy makers and elected officials.

He initially left UA to become founding chair of the department of cyber science at the Naval Academy. During his tenure there, the program became one of the first four ABET accredited cybersecurity programs in the country and grew to be one of the largest programs at the academy.

Parrish originally joined UA in 1990 in the UA department of computer science, earning tenure as a full professor in 2005.

In 2000, Parrish became the founding director of the CARE Research and Development Laboratory, which became CAPS in 2009.

Under his direction, CAPS grew to an organization with over 100 employees, students and faculty. During those years, Parrish successfully obtained over $100 million in more than 200 funded projects related to transportation and traffic safety.

Other roles at UA included becoming an associate vice president for research in 2015 prior to his departure for the Naval Academy.

He has been published in refereed journals and conferences in areas as diverse as data science, software engineering, transportation safety and technology education.

Parrish is active in computing education and workforce development. In 2016, he was recognized as a Fellow of ABET, which is the worldwide leading accrediting body for engineering, computing, technology and applied science in higher education.

Parrish received a doctorate in computer and information science from the Ohio State University in 1990.

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DR. DAVID W. ARNOLD professor of chemical and biological engineering, retired May 31, 2020. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving faculty member in the UA College of Engineering with 40 years of service. Arnold studied chemical engineering and earned his bachelor’s degree in 1971 from UA, master’s degree in 1976 from Georgia Institute of Technology and his doctorate in 1980 from Purdue University. His research primarily covered formulation, cleaning, rheology, atomization, combustion and commercial use of coal-water fuels; remediation of soil contaminated with oil; and formulation, rheology and process technology of the paints made from magnetic pigments that are used in the manufacture of magnetic recording media, such as audio and video tapes.

DR. PAULINE D. JOHNSON professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering, retired June 1, 2020, after more than 25 years of service to The University of Alabama. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Salford, Manchester in 1983 and a doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast in 1992, both in chemical engineering. In 1986, she received a graduate education degree from St. Andrews College, Glasgow. Johnson’s research interests were in the areas of water and wastewater treatment, sustainability, and student engagement in community service learning. She incorporated these diverse interests into innovative local and international engaged scholarship research projects involving infrastructure development, solar energy and the testing and treatment of water and wastewater for underserved communities in Peru and rural Alabama. Johnson received multiple awards including the Donald McLean Outstanding Civil Engineering Professor Award from UA’s CCE department in 2007 and 2009. She was given UA’s John L. Blackburn Award for Distinguished Contributions to Students in 2008 and the UA Distinguished Faculty Career Community Engagement Award by the UA Center for Community-Based Partnerships in 2015.

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UA Engineering Alumni Honor 2020 Outstanding Senior Peyton Strickland, who studied aerospace engineering and mechanics at The University of Alabama, received the 2020 Capstone Engineering Society Outstanding Senior Award.

Part of the University Honors Program and the Accelerated Master’s Program, Strickland is on track to graduate with a 4.0 grade point average in both his bachelor’s and master’s programs this year.

A native of Pelham, Alabama, he earned seven different scholarship awards during his time at UA, including a 2019 Barry Goldwater Scholarship and a 2018 and 2019 NASA/Alabama Space Grant Consortium Scholarship. A fixture on the UA President’s List since his first semester at the Capstone, Strickland was named a 2016 United States Presidential Scholar and 2016 Reach UA Foster and Homeless Youth Scholar Student.

In 2020, he was named UA National Alumni Association Outstanding Senior. The year prior, Strickland was named UA’s Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics Outstanding Junior and was listed on Aviation Week and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ list of 20 Twenties. He was inducted into the aerospace engineering honor society Sigma Gamma Tau in 2018, and he was named the organization’s 2019 South Central Regional Student of the Year.

Strickland has done his undergraduate research with Dr. Semih Olcmen, UA aerospace engineering and mechanics professor.

During summer 2018, he took an internship at MITRE. The company was impressed with his design work and offered him Department of Defense security clearance and a part-time position. From 2016-2018, Strickland was a mechanical engineering intern for MacLean Power Systems.

He has written two technical reports for the Missile Defense Agency, and he presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ 2018 Space Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. While at UA, Strickland led as an aerospace engineering and mechanics department ambassador, Sigma Gamma Tau vice president, AIAA student branch president and AIAA Region II student conference chairman. A member of the Alabama Rocketry Association, he was involved with the Alabama Rocket Engineering Systems IV Junior Team and the ARES V Senior Design Team.

Every other week, Strickland visited Central High School to teach students C ++ coding and worked to connect the students to NASA through video conferences and field trips. At the same time, he mentored seventh grade students at Echols Middle School and volunteered with the 2019 Tuscaloosa Rocketry Challenge.

Strickland worked with United Launch Alliance on rocket propulsion for all of this summer’s

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launches at Cape Canaveral, Florida, including the Atlas V rocket and the Mars 2020 rover, before returning to UA in the fall to finish his master’s degree.

The CES began the Outstanding Senior Award in 1986 to honor an exceptional student who deserves distinction among his or her peers. An outstanding student is selected from the 11 academic programs in the College, and the overall winner is determined by a selection committee after assessing each student’s academic performance, professional and technical activities, College leadership, external leadership and other activities.

Slater plans on pursuing a medical degree as well as a doctorate in biomedical informatics with the goal of conducting clinical computational oncology research while directing a lab at the university level.

UA Student Receives Goldwater Scholarship The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program has selected a student from The University of Alabama as a Goldwater Scholar for 2020-2021.

Hannah Slater

Hannah Slater, a Randall Research Scholar studying chemical engineering and chemistry from New Lenox, Illinois, is the 57th UA student to receive the prestigious Goldwater scholarship. Her parents are Ronald and Tina Slater.

Slater has worked under Dr. David A. Dixon, professor and Robert Ramsay Chair of Chemistry, researching the hydrogen bonding interaction between bioisosteres and amino acids using computational chemistry approaches. According to Slater, there is significant interest in designing drugs with novel binding sites for interactions with specific peptides in proteins to improve pharmaceutical outcomes.

Outside of research, Slater is president of UA’s student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, vice president of UA’s student chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society and volunteers at DCH Regional Medical Center. She also works as a residential adviser on campus.

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From left, Max Hawkins and Nicholas Hayes.

Three UA Students Earn Hollings Scholarships Three University of Alabama students will receive the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Ernest F. Hollings Undergraduate Scholarship for 2020-2022.

Two of those students have ties to the College of Engineering.

The scholarship provides a two-year academic award of $9,500 per year, and a 10-week, fulltime, paid summer internship opportunity at any NOAA facility nationwide. Scholars also receive funding to present their NOAA research projects at two national scientific conferences.

Since the program’s inception in 2005, 36 UA students have been named Hollings Scholars.

Max Hawkins, of Renner, South Dakota, is a computer engineering major and Randall Research Scholar. He has worked under Dr. Jeremy Bailin, associate professor of physics and astronomy, to improve radio astronomy data using machine learning techniques.

His research continues work Hawkins did in summer 2019 at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. During summer 2020, he

interned remotely at Breakthrough Listen, a $100 million initiative to search for civilizations beyond Earth. Hawkins is also a member of UA’s EcoCar team.

Nicholas Hayes, of Memphis, Tennessee, is a Randall Research Scholar pursuing a diverse combination of majors and minors in mathematics, physics, interdisciplinary linguistics, German and computer science.

Hayes serves as an undergraduate research assistant for Dr. Firat Soylu, assistant professor of educational psychology and neuroscience, and Dr. Zhe Jiang, assistant professor of computer science.

He contributes to projects focusing on bilingual math cognition, machine learning and spatiotemporal data mining with applications in earth science. Outside of research, Hayes is an Honors College Ambassador, Tide Talks executive team member and co-founder of Tuscaloosa’s chapter of the United Nations Association of the United States of America.

Thirteen UA Students Win Fulbright Awards

FULBRIGHT STUDENT RESEARCH AWARD RECIPIENTS: Joshua Kirks, of Kennesaw, Georgia, received a Fulbright Award to research, “Hollow Cathode Development and Testing,” at Dresden University of Technology in Germany. He is a UA graduate student in aerospace engineering and mechanics who holds a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from UA and memberships in Sigma Gamma Tau and Delta Phi Alpha honor societies.

FULBRIGHT ENGLISH TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIP AWARD RECIPIENTS: Mason Olivia Blanke, of Tuscaloosa, a UA Presidential Scholar, Honors College member and 2020 graduate in electrical engineering and physics with a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language, was chosen to teach in Poland.

Three University of Alabama students received Fulbright Student Research Awards and 10 have won Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Awards for the 2020–2021 academic year. Two of these students major in engineering.

The Fulbright Program is the most prestigious U.S. international exchange program, offering opportunities for students, scholars and professionals. The Fulbright Award of the U.S. Department of State offers one-year grants for independent study and research, and for English teaching assistantships overseas.

The highly competitive program selects about 1,500 award recipients from over 11,000 applicants each year. UA has received national recognition as a Top Producing Institution for Fulbright U.S. Students four of the last five years.

Sean Devey and Jane Gillette are studying aerospace engineering and mechanics at UA.

UA STEM Students among Nation’s Top 20 in 20s Two University of Alabama College of Engineering students are among the nation’s top 20 science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, students in their 20s.

Jane Gillette and Sean Devey were recognized as two of Aviation Week’s 20 Twenties for 2020,

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sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The award recognizes students earning STEM degrees who are nominated by their universities based upon great academic performance and research paired with civic contribution. Gillette, a May 2020 graduate from St. Louis, Missouri, studied aerospace engineering with a double minor in mechanical engineering and math. Last year, she balanced her bachelor’s degree while also working on her Master of Business Administration in the Accelerated Master’s Program, a route allowing students to take graduate classes early.

She has interned at NASA, United Launch Alliance and Boeing. Gillette was also recently named the first Brooke Owens Fellow at The University of Alabama and credits her involvement in the Alabama Rocketry Association.

Devey was a master’s student in aerospace engineering with a focus on experimental fluid mechanics. The North Salem, New York, native finished work on his master’s degree this summer with plans to graduate in December, and has begun a doctoral program at California Institute of Technology. Devey completed internships at PepsiCo, Lincoln Laboratory and Boeing during his time as a UA undergraduate.

He was also a Goldwater Scholar. He values time spent his sophomore year in the National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates, or REU, program hosted by Dr. Amy Lang, UA associate professor of aerospace engineering.

A May 2020 UA doctoral graduate, Nasir Eisty’s research interests are in the area of software engineering.

He completed his master’s degree in computer science at UA in 2018.

Eisty, who worked in UA computer science professor Dr. Jeffrey Carver’s software engineering research lab, will receive $25,000 to develop a tutorial on automated testing for scientific software.

Eisty’s work will focus on the development and delivery of a hands-on tutorial entitled “Automatic Testing in Scientific Software.” In the tutorial, he will give background information on automatic testing techniques in scientific software development and demonstrate hands-on test methods before concluding with a group discussion on the approaches most suitable for individual projects.

He will have the opportunity to interact with researchers from DOE national laboratories to introduce the tutorial.

He targets to present his tutorial at the eScience International Conference and the SuperComputing Conference to help developers produce more correct and reliable software. He will conclude his fellowship time with a BSSw webinar containing the tutorial materials.

Eisty was recognized along with the other 2020 Fellows during the 2020 Exascale Computing Project Annual Meeting on Feb. 4 in Houston.

UA Student Recognized as 2020 Better Scientific Software Fellow Nasir Eisty, a doctoral graduate in the computer science department at The University of Alabama, has been selected as a 2020 Better Scientific Software Fellow.

Better Scientific Software, or BSSw, is a U.S. Department of Energy project focused on improving software for computational science and engineering. The fellowship program provides funding for leaders and advocates of high-quality software.

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Demarcus Joiner

Meet UA’s New SGA President Demarcus Joiner, a junior civil engineering major from Roanoke, Alabama, was elected Student Government Association president for the 202021 term.

Joiner was inaugurated on March 31. Things looked a little different this year, but the University’s online learning shift didn’t slow things down. It was, virtually, business as usual.

Joiner comes to the position with significant experience. Last year, he served as SGA’s vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion.

One of Joiner’s primary goals as president is to work with UA’s Counseling Center to develop additional resources for students. He also plans to create a campus relations committee, where students from different campus communities have the opportunity to regularly meet with SGA to share concerns.

Since arriving at UA three years ago, Joiner has taken full advantage of the student life experience, involving himself in Collegiate 100, National Society for Black Engineers, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, or LSAMP, program and the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, to name a few.

In his spare time, his favorite thing to do is sing, and he participates in the Afro American Gospel Choir as often as he can.

Joiner is hopeful that his presidency will have a meaningful impact on students and the campus community.

said the research is environmentally geared and seeks to combat industrial emissions through more energy efficient separation processes.

She conducts her research with Dr. Jason E. Bara, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering.

O’Harra has been working with Bara since late in her time as an undergraduate student, while completing bachelor’s degrees in chemical and biological engineering and dance performance.

Kathryn O’Harra attended the IL-MAT V conference in Paris and received an award for her presentation.

At the IL-MAT Conference, O’Harra was able to present the research to and interact with international colleagues, as well as gain connections to form new collaborations.

UA Engineering Student Awarded U.S. Department of Transportation Fellowship A University of Alabama engineering doctoral student was awarded a national fellowship with the U.S. Department of Transportation.

After graduation, Joiner plans to attend law school, in preparation for a career in public service.

UA Chemical Engineering Doctoral Candidate Earns Research Award A University of Alabama engineering student’s research presentation was awarded a top honor at a recent international conference.

Kathryn O’Harra, a chemical engineering doctoral candidate, was awarded first place for her oral research presentation at the 5th International Conference on Ionic Liquid-Based Materials, or IL-MAT V. This conference, which was hosted in Paris, took place Nov. 4-8, 2019.

O’Harra gave an oral presentation about her doctoral research on the development, design, synthesis and application of high-performance ionic polymers and composites for gas separation membranes and 3D printing. She

Gabi Willis is a civil engineering doctoral student working with Dr. Sriram Aaleti.

Gabi Willis, a civil engineering doctoral candidate, was awarded a fellowship with the Dwight David Eisenhower Transportation Fellowship Program. This program, which is sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration, includes a $5,000 grant and an invitation to the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, which was held in January 2020.

The application for the fellowship asked students to detail a research topic they would like to explore that focused on transportation. The merit-based program awards grants of different amounts to 150-200 graduate students across the country annually.

Willis’ proposed research involves investigating the interface between an original pavement surface and a new overlay that might be poured to fix problems, like potholes. The research

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EVENTS FROM AROUND THE COLLEGE

aims to increase the durability of repairs to highways, bridges and other pavement surfaces.

A live webcast was provided for all ceremonies for those unable to attend because of underlying medical conditions or other concerns.

The TRB Annual Meeting attracted more than 13,000 attendees from around the world. Willis submitted an abstract for her research and met other academic and industry professionals.

UA Helps Bring Computer Science to Alabama High Schools A collaborative project between The University of Alabama and several statewide partners was awarded a nearly $4 million grant to bring computer science education to Alabama K-12 schools.

UA held joint spring and summer commencement exercises July 31 - August 2.

UA Holds Spring and Summer Commencement July 31-Aug. 2 The University of Alabama held joint spring and summer commencement exercises over three days beginning Friday, July 31, at Coleman Coliseum on the UA campus.

To maintain physical distancing guidelines, nine different ceremonies took place throughout the weekend, with a maximum of 530 graduates participating in each. The UA College of Engineering graduated at 9 a.m.

Sunday, Aug. 2. Nearly half of the spring and summer graduates registered to participate in the ceremony.

Extensive precautions were taken to meet health and safety standards. Each graduate was able to invite up to four guests to their ceremony. Those guests had to arrive and sit together. Event staff escorted groups to their seats, and they were asked to remain seated until instructed to exit by row.

Masks were required for everyone attending the event. Graduates and guests were encouraged to bring their own masks.

There were sanitizing stations throughout the coliseum, and the venue was cleaned between all ceremonies.

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The five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education will help the Pathways for Alabama Computer Science Initiative expand computer science education in Alabama, with a focus on high school students and those in rural and underrepresented communities.

As part of legislation that passed in May 2019, every high school in the state is required to offer a computer science course beginning this fall. The computer science project will train teachers to implement the legislative requirement.

The Pathways for Alabama Computer Science Initiative will host a Computer Science Professional Development Week over the next four summers, training 440 high school teachers, counselors and administrators around the state to introduce computer science to their students in the classroom. Although originally scheduled to be on the UA campus, this summer’s program moved to a virtual training amid COVID-19.

Educators learned strategies to encourage students to participate in computer science-related careers and were trained to teach rigorous computer science classes, such as an algebra course integrated with computer science information and an Advanced Placement computer science course.

UA’s College of Engineering and College of Education work with off-campus partners such as the Alabama State Department of Education, Tuskegee University, A+ College Ready, Dr. Kathy Haynie of Haynie Research and Evaluation, and others, to coordinate the summer training.

A total of five online workshops were held this summer.

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UA Offered Three Summer Courses on Coronavirus Three courses offered this summer at The University of Alabama helped students understand issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic and explored solutions to a shortage of personal protective equipment.

Two courses focused on understanding and tackling challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, one was offered during the May interim term on the shortage of PPE and the other during the summer semester on broader societal and organizational challenges.

The two design courses employ customer discovery approaches and design thinking to solve issues not only with PPE, but other issues of the pandemic such as changes in supply chains, education, product innovation and domestic abuse.

A third, seminar-style course over the summer term explored the pandemic through guest speakers with diverse expertise. The course provided students online lectures on topics surrounding the pandemic that ranged from health care to the economy to the design of public spaces.

The three courses were offered in the College of Engineering, Culverhouse College of Business and Honors College, College of Human Environmental Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Social Work.

The classes were set up as part of an ongoing effort to address complex, far-reaching problems with innovative solutions formulated by students.

By involving students from multiple areas of study from the partner colleges, faculty members hoped students could bring different perspectives to tackle challenges.

UA Satellite Team Offers Virtual Space Lessons Students at The University of Alabama building a small satellite as part of a NASA program continued their outreach efforts to state schools during the COVID-19 pandemic through online lessons.

The students in the group UASpace created lessons using Alabama math and science standards that teach about space, satellites and space exploration.

The lessons are available on an open Google Drive at uaspace.ua.edu/outreach, and are an extension of their efforts this past school year to bring spacecentered lessons into classrooms in rural areas of the state.

UASpace member Chet Wiltshire, from Virginia Beach, Virginia, works on components of the BAMA-1 CubeSat on campus in a photo taken before UA transitioned to limited business operations.

Piper Daniels, UASpace member from Grapevine, Texas, working on a Master of Business Administration after recently earning an aerospace engineering degree at UA, said reaching students is critical to the team’s mission.

It’s just one way the students adjusted while the University was on limited business operations with remote instruction. They are continuing the process of readying a small satellite to be launched into space as part of a NASA program.

The UA project is one of 18 small research satellites — called CubeSats — from 11 states selected by NASA to fly as auxiliary payloads aboard rockets launching in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and NASA centers proposed the selected missions in response to NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative.

UASpace, made up of nearly 50 students, calls their first mission BAMA-1. They aim to demonstrate an emerging technology to bring satellites out of orbit quicker. A launch date is not set, but the team requested a launch in the third quarter of 2021. The UA satellite will be taken to the International Space Station before deploying into orbit.

They are continuing their project through online communication and video conferencing amongst themselves and NASA while conducting initial testing over software programs.

Dr. John Baker, professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics, Dr. Rohan Sood, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics, and Michael Pope, instructor of marketing in the STEM Path to the MBA Program, are the team’s faculty advisers.

UASpace has received support from UA, Lockheed Martin, Linc Research Inc. and the Alabama Space Grant Consortium.

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Faculty balance family and work from home

By Alana Norris

A

s faculty scrambled to adjust their classes from in-person to online this spring, they also had to deal with learning technology they hadn’t used before and outside factors like full homes.

Preparing for classes with three children at home was not easy, said Dr. Sevgi Gurbuz, electrical and computer engineering assistant professor. Her 8, 9 and 14 year olds can take care of themselves for the most part, but that didn’t mean she had no extra obligations with them home at all times.

“The idea that we can work from home with children is a myth,” Gurbuz said. “We need to cook for them so they eat a balanced diet, guide them in their activities, regulate disputes and prevent excessive usage of TV and other digital materials.”

Her children like to spend time with her and were consistently vying for her attention. During the shutdown, she said parents are really the only people children could connect with socially.

“They want to be with us, play with us, and for us to be involved and interested in them,” Gurbuz said. “They interrupt constantly, making it difficult to focus on anything. I cannot tell you how many teleconferences I did with my youngest daughter hiding under my desk, curled up at my feet.”

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In addition to teaching students in her courses, she also attempted to teach her own children, in three different grades, while they were home.

However, Gurbuz isn’t sure how much they actually learned.

“The online classes given by teachers help my kids socially, and having homework gave them something to do other than games and mischief,” she said. “Any teaching we did was inconsistent and mostly in the form of helping on homework.”

Because of her responsibilities as a parent, Gurbuz said she regularly worked late hours trying to do it all. Even simple class and research work has taken a lot more time. She said this has impacted her health.

“It is a trade-off between health, family and kids that we cannot win,” Gurbuz said.

While her internet connection took a bit of a beating from its extended use, Gurbuz is grateful she was able to stay connected to her students online.

“I tried to be online as much as I could so that students would feel that I am accessible and that they were not left alone to fend with the material or general situation,” she said.

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When it was announced that UA was moving to remote learning, Dr. Heath Turner was not very hopeful.

“To be honest, my very first thought was that this was going to be a catastrophe. We have a very large department, lots of hands-on teaching labs, and we run one of the largest study-abroad programs in the country,” said Turner, the chemical and biological engineering department head.

Fortunately, he said, the switch turned out fine for his department.

“In retrospect, I was really amazed at how quickly everyone adapted and the encouraging attitudes of the faculty, staff and students throughout the entire process,” Turner said.

Turner’s wife has been homeschooling their three children for years. Other than some minor logistical issues, the adjustment to being at home all day was mostly on him.

Dr. Heath Turner, chemical and biological engineering department head, and his children filmed a video for students graduating in May 2020. Turner wished the new alumni the best while his children played Pomp and Circumstance.

Gurbuz recorded herself presenting the most important course material for students to watch on their own time and then connected with them in live video chats during the regular class times. During those chats, she was able to answer questions and go through example problems.

“I think overall they did learn, but overall my students commented that they really missed and preferred inperson education,” Gurbuz said.

She picked up some best practices from the initial experience and has shortened some of her videos and clearly labeled the required ones so as not to overwhelm students with content.

“Labeling would help them prioritize, and keeping them short would help them watch more,” Gurbuz said.

More than anything else, the biggest hurdle for her was the social isolation, and she felt she wasn’t alone in her outlook. Students told her the classes brought a form of structure and routine to an uncertain time.

“I was encroaching on their turf,” he said.

Instead of helping his children adapt to the new normal, they helped him. The family stepped in to do office work he needed help completing, like scanning homework and organizing documents.

Plus, his son, who plays cello and piano daily, provided background music for his conference calls. He even recruited his children to play Pomp and Circumstance for a video he made for his department’s May graduates.

“The College of Engineering posted the video on our homepage, and I got a lot of great feedback from our students,” Turner said.

One downside to having everyone home at once was the stability of the internet connection, and spring storms didn’t help the matter.

“One morning I had a live Zoom lecture scheduled, but my power was out due to storms. So, I quickly got in my car, drove over to my brother’s house and gave the lecture from my car, sitting in his driveway,” Turner said.

Like most faculty, he used a combination of typed documents, recorded lessons and video conferencing to teach his classes. The department worked together to make it a good experience for their students.

“It is difficult to work on anything in isolation.

Humans have great social needs,” Gurbuz said. “I think the biggest challenge for everyone, myself included, was psychological and finding ways to stay motivated, focused and on-task.”

“It took some adjustment, but I think it forced a lot of us to branch out and learn about some new technologies,” Turner said. “We had weekly faculty meetings via Zoom during this time, and we learned a lot of tips from each other, especially about administering tests remotely.”

After class, she had online office hours for more in-depth questions, which she said often centered around grading and other policy changes that came from the mid-semester switch to distance learning.

Overall, he feels the transition went well, and he was proud of his student’s performance.

“’Just do the best you can to learn, and the rest will work itself out. Don’t worry and stay healthy’ was the main message,” Gurbuz said.

“We were still able to finish the semester strong,” Turner said.

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Staff Steadfast in Supporting Students and Alumni While faculty and students were adjusting to digital classrooms, The University of Alabama’s staff was working to keep their offices productive from their homes.

From advising students on their courses, to informing potential new students of what UA has to offer and building strong relationships with alumni, the staff in the UA College of Engineering set up shop in their homes and made themselves available digitally.

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Liz Moore, assistant director for alumni engagement, had more than a few challenges early in the quarantine, but she made the most of her predicament.

“For the first three weeks of remote work, I was actually stuck in Peru due to border closures,” Moore said. “That was certainly challenging. I was not prepared to be working while away. So, I only had my cell phone. I quickly learned how to adapt and was able to keep things moving.”

Working on spreadsheets, video conferencing and emailing from her phone was difficult, and once she returned home, the situation didn’t get much better.

“Not so conveniently, my 10-plus year old laptop finally died on week five of shelter in place,” Moore said.

Fortunately, she was able to bounce back quickly, and got a routine under her belt working on a desktop computer at her dining room table.

She connects to colleagues through video teleconferencing and office chat rooms.

“That’s been helpful. We’re all in this together. There have certainly been some missteps, but I think that’s all part of it. We’re learning. This is an adjustment for everyone,” Moore said.

One positive to come from this challenging time has been her ability to connect with alumni.

Typically, it can take weeks to set up a phone call between busy schedules, but as the world slowed down, she has found it easier to catch people for a quick conversation.

“I’ve really enjoyed having more candid, casual conversations with a lot of folks during this time,” Moore said. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot about our alumni, and their deep care for our students and the college as a whole during this time.”

Liz Moore's dog, Edel, keeps watch over her makeshift desk at her dining room table.

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She’s kept herself busy by participating in multiple webinars and online professional development courses. Plus, she organized three lunch and learn sessions for students and alumni to connect virtually.

“I’ve seen our Capstone Engineering Society community show up for one another. Words of encouragement, willingness to help in recruiting, and being willing to talk and think through things strategically has been really good,” Moore said. “It seems that everyone is stretching themselves in new ways to adapt and make the most out of a difficult situation.”

She hates that the May class of 2020 missed out on spending their final months as a student on campus and a regular graduation, but she is also encouraged by their strength.

“As we welcome this class as alumni, I have been impressed with their resiliency and determination. I am confident they will go on and do impressive things in their career, and I look forward to continuing to walk with them in this process,” Moore said.

For returning students, mid-way through the spring semester is a time they usually start preparing their fall class schedules and registering. With the University closed, students were unable to meet with their advisers on campus, and they had to find new ways to connect with each other.

“I think we’ve learned to be adaptable and that there are a lot of ways to connect with students and get the job done,” said Tyler Roberts, assistant director of engineering student services.

His office has worked to meet with students through video chats, and they have also converted many of their printed documents, forms and flowcharts to digital versions.

However, he said the interactions he has with students haven’t really changed all that much.

“It’s still about making the student feel comfortable, engaging them in conversation, and finding out what their needs are to help them be as successful as possible,” Roberts said.

Samantha Proctor, coordinator of engineering student recruitment, often works from the living room in her home.

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“Although there are no in-person visits on campus, I am still connecting prospective students to UA’s College of Engineering on a daily basis,” Proctor said. “I have worked closely with [UA’s] admissions [office] and my fellow campus partners on developing the best ways to engage prospective students with UA virtually.”

In addition to phone calls and emails, Proctor has hosted virtual faculty chats, Q&A panels and information sessions to connect potential new students with each engineering department, the student Ambassadors of the College of Engineering and scholarship specialist Mary Kathryn Poe. She also worked with Lisa Sandy, manager of web communications, to create a new Virtual Visits page on the UA engineering website featuring videos and 360-degree facility photos taken

by Cris Porter, director of technology services.

Tyler Roberts, assistant director of engineering student services, is proud of how hard his colleague have worked from a distance.

Even with all the virtual teamwork and connection, Proctor said she misses seeing her colleagues and meeting potential students and their families every day. She has discovered just how important interacting with others is to her.

For the most part, he says working from a distance has gone better than expected with only minor complications. The real difficulties for him come from being a working parent, which has been a bit of a juggling act.

“My role revolves around interacting with people,” Proctor said. “I greatly miss in-person meetings, but have felt I still have been able to connect the prospective students to UA virtually through our offerings with admissions.”

“For me the biggest challenge has been balancing work with parenting responsibilities while the kids are at home,” Roberts said. “Trying to keep some semblance of a schedule with a 4-year-old and 7-year-old has been tough, but we’ve gotten into a good routine and made it work.”

Advising students is only one facet of Roberts’ job. His office also contributes to UA’s orientation, Bama Bound. To facilitate the completely online orientation sessions, his team made 12 two to three minute videos to introduce the foundational information all new engineering students need to know.

Roberts is proud of the hard work his colleagues have put in to making this experience the best it can be for engineering students, and he thinks it will strengthen the College in the future.

“They say necessity breeds innovation, and our team stepped up to the challenge under difficult circumstances to serve our students. I think carrying that creative outlook over when we are able to return to campus is going to be vital to us being as efficient and effective as possible moving forward,” Roberts said.

“We developed and implemented an entirely online orientation experience for incoming students and have been meeting with students [virtually] throughout the summer to get them prepared for the fall,” Roberts said.

Switching to online recruitment of engineering students has been a very collaborative endeavor for Samantha Proctor, coordinator of engineering student recruitment.

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ALUMNA AND STUDENT TRANSFORM THEIR DAILY LIVES TO SERVE

BY ALANA NORRIS

The St. Petersburg Distillery in Florida is producing hand sanitizer for thier community throughout 2020.

A

s the country came together in the spring of 2020 to help out fellow Americans during the novel coronavirus pandemic, University of Alabama alumni and students also stepped up to the call to produce protective equipment and serve others.

Nathan Eads, a freshman mechanical engineering student, teamed up with his friend Max Seidel, a mechanical engineering student at Northeastern University, to serve their hometown of Atlanta by creating face shields using 3D printers. Their project, called Atlanta Face Shields, had produced 4,000 shields as of early July.

“With our sister organizations around the city we have produced upwards of 25,000 units of various PPE,” Eads said.

His role in the project is to manage volunteers, allocate materials to 3D printing volunteers, schedule the retrieval of printed materials and keep an inventory of the parts.

“I also set up and recruited another set of volunteers to assemble these parts at our bi-weekly assembly sessions,” Eads said.

As the electrical design team leader of the Bama Racing Team and an employee in UA’s additive manufacturing lab, The Cube, he learned a lot about 3D printing this past school year.

“In both positions, I was able to greatly expand my knowledge of 3D printing.

I think these two roles were extremely impactful on the work I did on this project,” Eads said.

He wanted to stay busy during quarantine, and he figured the best thing he could do was to help in the pandemic response with his friend. But, that doesn’t mean it was easy.

“Frankly, it was pretty stressful, especially early on when we were receiving lots of attention and funding before we had really produced any results. Once we got our rhythm down, however, things started to be much more enjoyable,” Eads said.

The project is possible because of donations received through a crowdfunding site and volunteers giving their time, materials and equipment to help.

Clara Robbins, a 2017 chemical and biological engineering alumna, is the assistant master distiller and quality manager at the distillery.

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Early in the pandemic, the distillery started the hand sanitizer project and gave away the new product to first responders, hospitals and nursing homes.

Eads is just one of UA’s students and alumni who have worked to fill a need created by the pandemic.

Clara Robbins, a 2017 chemical and biological engineering alumna, is the assistant master distiller and quality manager at St. Petersburg Distillery in Florida. The distillery’s owners asked her to begin making hand sanitizer in the lab at work.

“Many distilleries nationwide began using their resources to create hand sanitizer in response to COVID-19,” Robbins said. “St. Petersburg Distillery was one of the first distilleries to begin making this transition in response to the pandemic.”

She said she spent days doing research, ordering ingredients and speaking with officials at the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration to get everything in order legally before she began blending the sanitizer. Once the production started, the first few batches went to health care professionals.

“We started giving away 5-gallon buckets of hand sanitizer to first responders, hospitals and nursing homes,” Robbins said. “We had countless inquiries from the public. So, the company arranged for public disbursements where people could drive up and received prepackaged mini bottles of St. Petersburg Distillery Hand Sanitizer.”

She distributes 2,000 units a week at community events with Feeding Tampa Bay. Being able to take part in the distribution has been a highlight for Robbins.

“When I see their faces and smiles, I am recharged and reminded of why I do this and why it is important. I cannot begin to express how this time has affected me,” Robbins said.

She does not take her role in this project lightly, and said it has really made an impact on her life to be part of the

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Robbins distributes 2,000 units a week at community events with Feeding Tampa Bay.

process from the beginning of its creation to the giveaway. As of early July, she has made more than 20,000 gallons of sanitizer. The plan is to continue producing until the end of the year.

“UA definitely helped prepare me for this,” Robbins said. “My chemical engineering background made this project easy for me to understand and a challenge that was exciting to dive into.”

The distillery is also selling the sanitizer in various sizes in addition to the free bottles they are giving away.

During this time, there have been countless stories of individuals and companies working to play a role in helping others during a crisis. Both Robbins and Eads demonstrated grit and compassion as they worked to be problem solvers.

Nathan Eads, a mechanical engineering student, teamed up with a friend to produce face shields using 3D printers for their hometown of Atlanta.

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BY ALANA NORRIS

Dr. Derek Williamson

Dr. Beth Todd

Two forward-thinking University of Alabama engineering faculty members have started a research project evaluating the quality of online engineering education in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr. Derek Williamson, civil, construction and environmental engineering associate professor, and Dr. Beth Todd, mechanical engineering associate professor, are working on the project with help from UA’s Institute for Social Science Research.

A survey was created and sent during the summer to a database of private and public engineering schools across the country amassed by the duo.

A valid data set would require at least 150 responses, which may be challenging to gather with so much on everyone's plate, but Williamson and Todd are hopeful to learn more. In addition to their research project, both faculty members were simultaneously preparing for their own virtual classrooms.

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Two faculty members study effectiveness of online engineering education “It was something that just had to get done,” Williamson said. “Under the circumstances, and as engineers would say with real-world constraints of time and experience, this was the best we could do, and I think we did a pretty darn good job.”

Todd said she was at an advantage when it came to teaching virtually because the mechanical engineering undergraduate program has been offered online through Bama By Distance, UA’s distance and nontraditional degree path, for about the last five years.

Other than labs, the lessons had already been recorded from actual in-person classes and the course material was ready for student use. With the University's visionary strategy for online learning, mechanical engineering students had access to high quality lessons rivaling an in-person experience.

Mechanical engineering is the only engineering department at UA that offers a bachelor’s degree from a distance. This left all other faculty 10 days to transition their classes online, including spring break and an extra preparation week before virtual instruction began.

“I think it’s better to think of it as a COVID-driven emergency remote education,” Williamson said, emphasizing that online courses usually take at least a year to create. “We had to develop tools quickly.”

He said a group of faculty in his department came together to discuss best practices and tools to use in their courses. For his classes, Williamson recorded his live video lectures and posted them online for the class. He rescinded remaining tests after spring break and really emphasized projects.

Todd also wrestled with how to give exams to her class. She tried multiple choice and problem solving formats to ensure the students were being appropriately tested on the material they had learned throughout the semester. Another class she taught was senior design where students create a product, but with the machine shop and The Cube closed, students were limited in their options.

“We just had to do presentations on Zoom,” Todd said, adding her power had gone out 30 minutes before the scheduled presentations but returned right in time.

Todd didn’t have an internet connection at home until about 10 years ago when she got sick and had to work from home for a little while. However, she hadn’t used her home internet since then, and at the time campus shut down, she only had a tablet to work on at home.

“I spent a lot of time that first week talking to different colleagues asking them really basic questions about

how to set up different electronic communication,” Todd said. “It felt like every day was learning a new piece of software to do something I could do so much more easily in my office.”

Williamson and his wife, an artist who typically teaches in a studio, were both working online from home and it caused him to have to upgrade their internet speed and router.

“I had 100 megabytes per second line, and that wasn’t going to cut it,” Williamson said.

He said students and faculty both had to work to access the appropriate technology for online learning. There was a worldwide shortage of webcams and other devices in great demand during the pandemic, Williamson said.

His own laptop died the first day of distance education, but he was able to get a lot of support from the College’s technology services team, specifically from director Cris Porter.

“Expecting all students to have highspeed internet connections is simply not realistic, and it didn’t happen,” Williamson said. “Every faculty had to figure out how to accommodate their students in their particular situations in a way you never would if everyone was on campus and the playing field was completely level.”

He noted that some students had to start working to support their families, and others got sick and were dealing with recovering.

“There are great stories about perseverance of our students and their families that were really inspiring to me.

One reason I worked so hard is because they worked so hard,” Williamson said.

Through it all, Williamson and Todd are both interested in examining the data they receive and learn more about the impact this pandemic has had on engineering education across the nation.

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BY ALANA NORRIS

STUDENTS DEMONSTRATE STRENGTH IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY

L

eaving campus abruptly mid-semester was a tough adjustment for many students. Plans and competitions were canceled. Research and class projects were put on hold.

Not having the in-person support of fellow classmates who live and study on the same campus was hard for Abigail Reynolds, a student studying civil engineering, not to mention the intense gravity of the pandemic.

“The biggest struggle for me was staying motivated. When you see all that is going on in the world, it became increasingly harder to be motivated to do work. Anxiety can be paralyzing, and self-motivation can be really hard,” Reynolds said.

It was shocking to see the world stop, she said, and hard for her to believe she wouldn’t

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UA's Human-Powered Vehicle Team, left to right, Nick Sirinakis, Jack Muriano, Allie Surrency, Sabrina Barber, Olivia DeGroot and Aaron Cornelison; seated, Tessa Holloway, attempted to complete their project from a distance after campus closed, but in the end, they decided not to compete in the virtual competition.

get to return to campus to finish her junior year. She’s not sure if she has fully realized the impact this time has made on her collegiate years.

“I kept thinking at first that the spring semester would resume back on campus.

I never knew it would last this long,” Reynolds said.

She prefers walking to class, seeing her peers and working on their assignments together because it keeps her more focused on her responsibilities. Even though she was able to study with her friends online and she got support from faculty, it didn’t quite feel the same.

“I did work with my peers from a distance but nowhere near as much as I did when we were all on campus,” Reynolds said. “The professors were extremely accommodating and helpful.

They were very reassuring that we would figure it out and that we were all in it together.”

She had planned to spend her summer in Austria in a new study abroad program with the civil, construction and environmental engineering department that had to be canceled. Instead, Reynolds took the classes online and said her professors were very accommodating. Fortunately, her co-op with Brasfield & Gorrie has not been impacted by the pandemic.

Sabrina Barber was also disappointed her time at UA ended so abruptly. A May 2020 mechanical engineering graduate, she felt discouraged she didn’t really get to say goodbye to the place she spent the last four years living and studying.

“I trusted that my teachers would be able to figure out how to transition to online classes, but not being able to finish my college career with my fellow classmates and friends in the same place was what was more upsetting,” Barber said.

Sometimes the live video teleconferencing calls could get overwhelming with group presentations often running longer than the allotted time. Switching to online classes was a learning experience for everyone, she said.

A member of UA’s Human-Powered Vehicle Team, Barber and the group of six other mechanical engineering students did not have the opportunity to finish building their vehicle after campus closed. Each year, the team’s goal is to build a tricycle for a competition hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Once the contest switched to a virtual event, the team began working from a distance, but their objectives looked a little different. The competition pivoted to a written format.

“We were able to work on final documentation, hand calculations, CFD [computational fluid dynamics] analysis, and final modeling adjustments from home,” Barber said.

Surprisingly, she said the distance actually helped them become more productive during meetings, but in the end, the team did not participate in the online competition this year.

Struggles aside, she is still proud of all the work the team was able to complete, and her hope is that a new team will be able to continue the project this school year.

“We luckily had done a lot of necessary testing before COVID moved us online,” Barber said. “For some testing where the bike would have needed to be built fully, such as turn radius testing, we were able to do hand calculations to prove our design fit specifications. We also included a section in our design report on what needed to be done for the bike to be fully built so that the next team could complete our bike.”

Throughout all the hardships these engineering students learned a lot about being resilient and flexible when times get tough, and they’ll be able to use this lesson for the rest of their life.

To offer support to those adjusting to the changes, UA’s Counseling Center has been offering services, like consultations and individual counseling, to the UA community while also adhering to the new health guidelines put in place on campus. Several resources have been made available online at counseling.sa.ua.edu/socialdistancing-and-coping-skills.

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Unit Operations Lab Goes Remote

BY ALANA NORRIS

O

ver the summer, chemical and biological engineering faculty were able to bring a longplanned idea to fruition for their students.

For the first time at The University of Alabama, the CHE 323 Operations Laboratory course became a remote lab dependent on teaching assistants and instructors to manage the experiments on campus using directions given by students from a distance.

“We have worked very hard to make the experience as close to in-person as possible, with as much control in the hands of the students as we can,” Dr. Stephen Ritchie said.

Ritchie, an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering, has led the remote lab project

that puts students on teams that work together to operate large-scale unit operations experiments through their teaching assistants.

“The TA is serving as their hands, and operating instructions supplied by the team to the TA must be clear and explicit,” Ritchie said. “Diagnostics are critical to ensure equipment is connected as displayed in the supplied process flow diagram.”

The students guide the TAs from a distance through audio and video interaction and written step-by-step procedures.

The class stays connected through Zoom channels, a video communications and chat platform. Using this program allows people to enter and leave their meetings as needed, he said.

“Experimental data of interest includes temperatures, pressures, flows and concentrations. Each of these can be measured remotely, or with the help of a TA in the lab. All data is recorded on the console computer that is controlled by the team,” Ritchie said.

In this new format, data acquisition is now automated through LabVIEW. The program records most of the data in an electronic logbook while some is still recorded manually in a notebook.

The class also shares files through Box, a cloud content management system, and the students take exams on Blackboard, a learning management system.

The goal is for the students to control and collect data from their experiments.

“Students take remote desktop control of a computer that is interfaced with the experiment,” Ritchie said. “Experiments in Summer 2020 have included heat exchange, control valve, continuously stirred tank reactor, distillation and sorption.

Student groups monitor instrument readings, and to varying degrees, control the experiment.”

The lab was offered to students during both summer sessions. Summer I had 14 students, and there were 17 students in Summer II. Students from as far as Kuwait registered for the course.

“Three of the students who took the class in Summer I served in TA roles in Summer II,” Ritchie said.

One of those students who had the unique opportunity to be involved in both roles is Elise Kaminski, a chemical engineering senior. She had never taken a remote lab before this summer and said it was unlike any course she’d ever taken.

She said students work to design procedures that produce quality experimental data, and TAs execute those plans with attention to lab and equipment safety. TAs only intervene

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if the instructions they’re given can potentially generate hazardous conditions in the lab.

“As a student in unit ops, you are responsible for experimental design and for explicitly conveying to the TAs how they should conduct the experiment for you,” Kaminski said. “As a general TA, your role is to follow the instructions given by the teams, much as an operator in a plant would.”

Along with the two other TAs, Kaminski worked over the summer to adjust the lab for new sensors and equipment being used in the fall term. In addition to practicing technical skills and writing, she has learned a lot about teamwork throughout the experience.

“This class also demonstrated for me the importance of focusing on team unity and validating your teammates. If teams allow themselves to focus on issues and don't address concerns in a healthy way, it really sets the team up for challenges,” Kaminski said.

Each session had two instructors and a lab manager. The lab manager was Dr. Jair LizarazoAdarme, a research engineer in the engineering dean’s office who earned his doctorate in chemical engineering at UA. He had been designing and implementing upgrades to bring a remote lab operation to undergraduate students for a few years, but the coronavirus pandemic sped up the implementation.

“COVID gave us the impetus to implement remote operation,” Lizarazo-Adarme said.

“My role with the class has been upgrading the lab to bring trending technologies currently used in industry. I have been working on a control room operation concept that includes hardware upgrades that would allow us to capture ‘industrial style big data.’ These remote systems also allow us to add lab aspects to traditional lecture courses.”

Roscoe Wallace Sr, a 1989 chemical engineering graduate, said this form of delivery for the lab will help students be on the forefront of evolving processes. He sees this lab as a kind of realworld application that not everyone gets to experience.

“With advances in technology and the mechanization of production processes,

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engineers must be able to work remotely with data to solve problems and improve efficiencies,” Wallace said.

In July, Ritchie spoke about UA’s efforts during an American Institute of Chemical Engineers webinar where about 150 attendees nationwide heard from him and three other faculty representing Iowa State University, Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Tulsa.

“We are at the forefront of this type of work, since we are one of the few programs in the country with a large chemical engineering lab over the summer,” said Dr. Heath Turner, chemical and biological engineering department head.

The unit operations lab was Paul Lammers’ favorite class. A 1985 chemical engineering graduate, he agrees that this remote lab reflects the format of current chemical plants and will give students a heads up for what to expect in the workforce.

“The changes that were forced by COVID-19 to this class adds a dimension that takes it a step closer to an operating chemical plant,” Lammers said. “I hope that when ‘normal’ returns the department will keep this remote activity as part of the course.”

The department plans to continue offering hybrid labs to students for CHE 321 and CHE 322. In the hybrid course, the four-person teams will have two students in the lab as operators while two students work from a distance.

“Chemical plants are run from control rooms with remote operation. So, we will continue to operate like this for the foreseeable future,” Ritchie said.

JOBS. PROMOTIONS. AWARDS. RECOGNITION.

1979

2000

JOHN F. "BUDDY" BLACK

DR. BRADLEY P. RYAN

BSCE, has joined Neel-Schaffer Inc. in Birmingham as a senior structural engineer after a 40-year career with the Alabama Department of Transportation, including 37 years in the bridge department where he served as state bridge engineer his last eight years.

BSChE, has been hired as the first chief product officer with the National Committee for Quality Assurance in Washington, D.C.

2004

1981 JOE D. BATTLE BSCET, has been named interim network director for VISN 7, the Veterans Affairs Southeast Network in Duluth, Georgia.

1986 CHARLES A. VICE BSME, is retiring as vice chairman of Intercontinental Exchange Inc. He will remain an adviser to the firm through February 2022.

(Photo courtesy of Intercontinental Exchange)

L. JUSTIN BURNEY BSChE and MSChE ’05, has joined the Huntsville office of the law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP as a partner in the corporate and securities practice group.

2007 DAVID HOLT BSChE and MSChE ’09, is a founding partner of Loftin Holt LLP, a boutique business litigation law firm located in Huntsville.

1991

2008

GARY W. WOLF

JOAN REICHWEIN SMITH

BSChE, has joined PBI-Gordon as senior director of operations in Kansas City, Missouri.

BSMtE, has been named vice president of PeopleTec, Inc. in Huntsville.

(Photo courtesy of PeopleTec)

(Photo courtesy of PBI-Gordon)

1993

2011

CHRIS HUMPHRES

U.S. AIR FORCE CAPT. KRISTIN “BEO” WOLFE

BSEE and MSEE ’95, has been named vice president of enterprise data for the American Red Cross.

BSChE, has been named the new F-35A Demo Team Pilot for the 2020 and 2021 air demonstration season. Capt. Wolfe became the first female F-35A Demo Team pilot and only the second USAF F-35A Demo Team Pilot in history.

(Image credit: USAF)

Something we missed?

Please send us your professional achievements and recognitions for inclusion in Alumni Notes by visiting eng.ua.edu/alumni/update

41

ITEMS OF INTEREST TO CAPSTONE ENGINEERS & COMPUTER SCIENTISTS

The 2020 State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame inductees are, from left, Michael Johns, Kenneth Kelly, Jody Singer, Linda Ducharme, Sheila Cummings and David Mobley.

UA Alumni and Friends Inducted into State Hall of Fame

JODY SINGER

Two University of Alabama alumni and a friend of the UA College of Engineering were inducted into the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame in the class of 2020.

Sheila Cummings, Michael Johns and Jody Singer joined the 192 inducted into the Hall of Fame over the past 32 years. Johns and Singer are UA engineering graduates, and Cummings and Johns serve on the UA College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Board.

Founded in 1987 by proclamation of the governor, the hall of fame honors, preserves and perpetuates the outstanding accomplishments and contributions of individuals, projects, corporations and institutions that brought and continue to bring significant recognition to the state. For more information and full biographies, visit aehof.eng.ua.edu.

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As director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Singer manages nearly 6,000 civil service and contractor employees either on site or nearby and steers a $2.8 billion budget. In her role, she is a critical part of returning NASA astronauts and scientists to the Moon and beyond on American-made rockets and spaceflight vehicles.

She grew up in Hartselle, Alabama, and graduated from The University of Alabama with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering in 1983. She began her career with NASA in 1985 through the professional intern program in the mission planning and development office.

In 2002, she was appointed to the Senior Executive Service, the personnel system covering top managerial positions in federal agencies. Her honors include NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals and two Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive Awards, the highest honor for career federal employees. She was also awarded the Silver Snoopy Award by the NASA astronaut corps.

FALL 2020

MIKE JOHNS Through his work at Southern Research Institute as vice president of the engineering division, Johns has grown annual revenue to more than $25 million in research volume for a division that employs more than 100 engineers, scientists and support staff. He has directed and managed high-profile research and commercial projects and has been a strong advocate for the key technologies the country needs to develop.

He graduated from The University of Alabama in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and would later earn his MBA from UA in 2005. He began his career with Southern Research as a cooperative education student, joining full time as a materials engineer after graduation.

He is an active member of the UA College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Board, the UA mechanical engineering advisory board and the UA STEM Path to the MBA board.

SHEILA CUMMINGS Cummings is the founder, president and CEO of Cummings Aerospace Inc., a Native American woman-owned small business in Huntsville. Since its inception in 2009, she has led all aspects of corporate operations and strategic development for the company as it has positioned itself to be an industry-recognized leader of aerospace engineering solutions and technologies for aerospace system development.

In 1995, Cummings graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. Her service to her profession includes membership on the board of directors for the National Defense Industrial Association, the advisory board for The University of Alabama Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics and the UA College of Engineering Dean’s Leadership Board.

The UA College of Engineering hosted the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Bryant Conference Center in Tuscaloosa this February. Inductees were also treated to a luncheon in the McAbee Grand Foyer of H.M. Comer Hall earlier in the day. The induction ceremony is hosted by a different university each year.

Three additional individuals, Linda DuCharme, Kenneth Kelly and David Mobley, were also inducted in the 2020 AEHOF class.

The 2020 State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame induction ceremony was hosted by UA and held in Bryant Conference Center.

The Hall of Fame is overseen by engineering colleges and schools at Auburn University, Alabama A&M University, The University of Alabama, Tuskegee University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the University of South Alabama.

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WALID M. KANSO Walid M. Kanso, of Northport, died Feb. 24, in Tuscaloosa. He graduated from The University of Alabama in 1992 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and again in 1993 with a master’s degree also in civil engineering. Kanso worked as a civil engineer, an engineering consultant and an instructor in the Freshman Engineering Program at UA.

J. RAY MCGAHA Jerry “Ray” McGaha, of Winfield, died Feb. 19, at UAB Medical Center in Birmingham. Born in Kansas, Alabama, McGaha was a graduate of Thomas W. Martin High School. In 1966, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mineral engineering from The University of Alabama, and he was recognized in 1988 as a Distinguished Engineering Fellow of the UA College of Engineering. After retiring from Continental Conveyor as senior vice president of sales and engineering, McGaha worked as director at Overland Conveyor Company and president of J. Raymac Incorporated.

DR. JIM A. RICHARDSON Dr. James "Jim" Andrew Richardson, of Tuscaloosa, died May 28. Born in Reno, Nevada and raised in San Jose, California, Richardson graduated with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Davis. He received his doctorate from the University of Nevada, Reno. Soon after graduating, Richardson accepted a job at The University of Alabama in 1989. For 30 years, he taught civil engineering at UA. Richardson was passionate about being a teacher and worked closely with students as faculty adviser of UA’s Concrete Canoe team and Steel Bridge team. Known for being a bridge specialist, he often supplied expert testimony and helped move and rebuild old Alabama bridges.

H. KENNETH WHITE SR. Herbert "Kenneth" White Sr., of Montgomery, died May 8. White graduated from The University of Alabama in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. He started his career at Goodwyn Engineering in Montgomery. White acquired a professional engineering license in 1976 and a professional land surveyors license in 1978. He was a licensed professional engineer in nine states and a licensed land surveyor in Mississippi and Alabama. White helped start a new firm, Pilgreen and White, Inc., in 1986. He wanted to start a family-owned business, and in 1998, he opened H. Kenneth White & Associates, Inc. In 2011, White retired from the family business and began work as the first town engineer of the town of Pike Road, where he served until 2015. He served in leadership positions on several boards and committees during his career including president of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame Board of Directors, president and national director of American Council of Engineering Companies of Alabama, Montgomery chapter president of Alabama Society of Professional Land Surveyors, vice president of the executive committee of American Consulting Engineers Council national headquarters, chairman of the Small Firms Council for members of ACEC, president of ACEC's Council of Professional Surveyors, and trustee of ACEC's Business Insurance Trust. White frequently engaged in ACEC's legislative summit in Washington, D.C. He was also a member of the National Society of Professional Engineers, Alabama Society of Professional Engineers, American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Board of Directors of UA’s Capstone Engineering Society. White founded the Sandra E. & H. Kenneth White Endowed Engineering Scholarship at UA in 2006. His achievements include being named an ACEC Fellow, a Distinguished Engineering Fellow of UA's College of Engineering, and an Outstanding Fellow of UA’s civil engineering department. In 2009, White was inducted in the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame. During and after college, he served in the National Guard. As chairman of a disaster relief team, White designed and developed a mobile shower and washing facility for volunteers and relief workers after Hurricane Katrina.

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Roy D. Alberts, BSCE ’51

Frank C. Mann, BSCE ‘48

Col. Robert M. Alexander III, BSCE ’56

David C. Millican Sr., BSMinE ‘71

Lt. Col. James W. Ashmore Jr., BSME ‘49

Ronald O. Musgrove, BSME ‘56

H. Ray Bailey, BSCE ‘66

Dr. Joyce K. Neighbors, MSE ’67; Ph.D. ‘77

Steven B. Beckham, BSEET ‘92

Johnny M. Nick, BSIE ‘72

Patrick J. Bowers Sr., BSEE ‘58

James M. Parr, BSCS ‘91

Robert L. Burdick, BSAE ‘69

James G. Patterson Sr., BSCE ‘60

Hubert C. Calloway, BSCE ‘73

James N. Pennington, BSCE ‘76

James A. Curley, BSMtE ‘59

Don L. Sandlin, BSIE ‘61

Don A. Delashaw, BSME ‘85

James M. Sheffield, BSEE ‘75

Thomas C. Domeika, BSEE ‘62

John D. Sims, BSAE ‘61

W. Kavanaugh Francis Jr., BSME ’65; MSME ‘68

Jimmie L. Smith, BSME ‘64

Roger L. Free, BSME ‘63

James D. Smith, BSEE ‘58

James D. Freeman Jr., BSEE ‘48

Scott W. Spaulding, BSMtE ‘53

Robert F. George, BSChE ‘59

Richard A. Stephens, BSEE ‘60

James K. Harrison, MSME ‘64

Thomas R. Turner, BSME ‘62

Ewell R. Heatherly, MSME ‘65

Srinath Venkataram, MSEE ‘92

Lloyd H. Johnson, BSAE ‘52

William T. Vickers, BSCE ‘63

Glenn E. Jones, BSChE ‘62

Wade Walker, BSCE ‘66

Keith M. Kearney, BSCE ‘80

Lawrence Warner, BSCE ‘49

Sheila B. La Rue, BSEE ‘85

Wilma T. Weems, BSIE ‘80

Fearn LaBan, BSCE ‘55

Charles K. Welch, BSME ‘48

Fred T. Lackey Jr., BSIE ‘59

James H. Wilson, BSCE ‘62

Hezkiah T. Layman, BSIE ‘53

Ernest L. Woodruff, BSCE ‘53

Hugh Mallory III, BSChE ‘58

Rodney M. Young, BSME ‘82

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THE ENGINE THAT KEEPS THE COLLEGE MOVING

Cris Porter

Cris Porter, College of Engineering director of technology services, was a major asset for engineering faculty, staff and students as the College transitioned to distance learning and working. Learn more about him in this Q&A.

CE: What do you do as director of technology services? How big is your team?

Porter: Technology services involves supporting all the hardware and software needs for all College of Engineering faculty, staff and students. In addition, we operate The Cube, the College’s additive manufacturing — 3D printing — space. Our team consists of myself, three system administrators/ desktop support specialists and a 3D printing specialist who manages The Cube. We also employ student workers to assist other students when they need help with 3D printing or installing software needed for classes.

CE: How does your job support the College of Engineering faculty, staff and students? Why is your job important to keeping the College successful?

Porter: The College of Engineering relies heavily on technology both in research and in the classroom.

In addition to maintaining faculty and staff office computers, we also support high-performance computing for research and help students install engineering software on their personal laptops. My department is involved in the complete life cycle of technology, from sourcing new equipment and installing new operating systems and applications to maintaining and troubleshooting over 2,000 computers throughout the College.

CE: What is something you wish people knew about technology services and/or the UA College of Engineering?

Porter: The College of Engineering technology services department is available to assist our users regardless of their location. I have assisted students who were in Japan and Kuwait and faculty members traveling in Europe and doing research in Antarctica.

So, users across town or across the country shouldn’t hesitate to contact us.

CE: What did you have to do to facilitate distance learning in the College of Engineering? How did it go?

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CAPSTONE ENGINEER

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FALL 2020

Porter: We were lucky in that we were already moving in the right direction before the pandemic and the move to limited business operations and distance learning. As a College, we transitioned from campus computer labs to a BYOD — bring your own device — model over the last three years. So, students were already using their own laptops instead of relying on PCs [personal computers] on campus. We also invested in remote support tools last year that enable us to install software remotely and allow us to log onto users’ PCs remotely so we can assist them.

CE: What was most challenging in the transition to distance learning?

Porter: Technically, the biggest challenge was introducing a lot of users to VPNs [virtual private networks], remote desktop connections, Zoom and other tools for working remotely. Everyone in my department had been using these tools for years, so we took them for granted, but I think a lot of people were surprised to find out how much could be done remotely.

CE: What did you learn from this experience?

Porter: I learned that we have a capable team in place to handle the variety of issues that come up. Jordan McGee, Dennis Rath and Ben Hurst have resolved hundreds of support requests over the past months, and Sam Andrus has led a group of volunteers across campus to print, assemble, and deliver over 3,500 face shields to health care professionals and first responders across West Alabama.

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

DEAR ALUMNI & FRIENDS, This has certainly been a year of change!

Things look and feel very different this fall. Yet, the spirit of UA still shines through. Regardless of any uncertainties, the commitment to excellence remains. I have witnessed such strength and determination in light of what has undoubtedly been a very challenging year.

To our graduating seniors, we are proud of you. It is my hope that you will stay connected to the College of Engineering and the people you met during your time at the Capstone. Commencement celebrations did not resemble what I am sure you had envisioned, but I hope you still feel celebrated. I am confident the skills you were forced to hone during 2020 will serve you well in your lifetime. This is a moment in time you will never forget.

To our alumni, some of you are thriving and seeing higher profit margins than ever before, while many of you have lost jobs, and others of you like Clara Robbins at St. Petersburg Distillery are working creatively to face the challenges COVID-19 has thrown at us. In all scenarios, it is apparent you are problem solvers and full of grit.

To our faculty and staff, it is a privilege to work alongside people who embrace change and adapt

to new challenges. The shift to remote teaching was swift and new for many. While nothing can truly replace the in-person experience, you have kept the safety and wellbeing of our students a priority.

The Capstone Engineering Society is committed to continuing to develop our students into wellrounded professionals, and providing opportunities for alumni to remain involved with the College in meaningful ways. I am looking forward to the upcoming CES Golf Tournament on Nov. 9, as we implement new ways for individuals to contribute to the CES Endowed Scholarship Fund, continuing to build upon a strong foundation of philanthropy. I hope you will consider joining us in person or in the new virtual platform.

As always, we are honored to be a resource for you and a place where you can come home. On behalf of the Capstone Engineering Society, stay safe and healthy.

Roll Tide,

Liz Moore Manager, Capstone Engineering Society Assistant Director for Alumni Engagement

DRIVING INNOVATION

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Capstone Engineering Society College of Engineering Box 870200 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0200

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