Engineering Progress Spring 2021

CONNECTED

Don’t

Jeffery

Ralph

Aditi

Roland

Ricardo

Leigh

Cindy

Message from the Dean

It has been a remarkable year in the College of Engineering. Our faculty and staff have shown their tireless dedication to keeping the college running since we began our reduced on-campus presence more than a year ago. We are optimistic that there is a light at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic, with cases gradually decreasing and more people being vaccinated. The university’s goal is to open for largely in-person instruction and regular research activities in fall 2021, in alignment with local, state and national health guidelines. This will involve continuing safety procedures and an optimized mix of working remotely and in-person to prioritize everyone’s overall health.

Amidst this challenging time, our faculty continue to push research frontiers and help our students gain a strong engineering education. We are proud to celebrate our eight faculty members who received NSF CAREER awards this year. This milestone achievement signifies the exceptional talents of our early-career researchers. This year’s awards span a wide spectrum of research that embodies our mission of connecting people and technology, from quantum hardware for next-generation communication platforms to hightemperature materials for spacecraft.

In keeping with our dedication to student success and ensuring students receive the support they need, we are pleased to share that Avenue-E became a part of the College of Engineering last fall. Avenue-E is a program designed to help community college transfer students smoothly transition to UC Davis, and ultimately, a career in engineering or computer science. It aims to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, with the goal of creating a new generation of promising STEM talent and leadership. This program was developed by UC Davis and founding corporate partner, Chevron, in collaboration with Los Rios, Peralta, San Joaquin Delta and Contra Costa Community College districts.

We’re also delighted to announce the largest-ever single donation to the College of Engineering by an individual. With her $6.5M gift to name the new Engineering Student Design Center, electrical and computer engineering alumna and information technology executive Diane Bryant will inspire women and other underrepresented students in STEM, fund essential learning for aspiring engineers and solidify her legacy as a leader in technology. The Diane Bryant Engineering Student Design Center —due to open in fall 2022 — will offer hands-on educational experiences and encourage students to envision how they will change the world.

The college dean search is well underway and we hope to announce our next dean this summer. The incoming dean will guide us forward in a post-pandemic environment, while planning for a bright future and ensuring the ongoing success of the College of Engineering. Thank you for being a part of our past and our future.

Go Ags!

Jeffery C. Gibeling Interim Dean, UC Davis College of Engineering

Alumni Involvement Opportunities

Alumni can get involved with the College of Engineering virtually through the online opportunities listed below. To learn more or sign up to participate, visit engineering.ucdavis.edu/alumni/get-involved/

Engineering Design Showcase

June 3, 2021

9:30am - 9:30pm

The Engineering Design Showcase is the culminating experience for graduating seniors. Our virtual showcase features student teams and design projects from all eight departments. Show your support by reviewing projects and sharing feedback on posters, overview videos and other project materials. Please register by May 20, 2021.

https://engineering.ucdavis.edu/ events/engineering-designshowcase

ENG 3 Intro to Engineering Design Spring Showcase,

June 4, 2021

9:30 am – 9:30 pm

Serve as an evaluator and provide valuable feedback to our students in ENG 3

Introduction to Engineering Design course. ENG 3 is a 4-unit communication elective offered to College of Engineering undergraduates. Student teams apply their engineering design, technology and communication skills to address “human-centered” challenges facing elders in collaboration with the Family Caregiving Institute at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

https://engineering.ucdavis. edu/events/eng-3-introengineering-design-springshowcase

BREAKING RECORDS:

EIGHT ENGINEERING FACULTY RECEIVE NSF CAREER AWARDS

Eight College of Engineering assistant professors received National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) awards this year, setting a college record and helping UC Davis lead the nation.

The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious honor for early-career researchers, recognizing faculty with the potential to serve as role models in research, teaching, service and leadership. These awards fund projects that should serve as the foundation for the rest of a faculty member’s career. The recipients and a summary of their award-winning projects are listed below:

By Noah Pflueger-Peters

JON HERMAN Civil and Environmental Engineering – “Dynamic Adaptation of Water Resources Systems to Navigate Uncertain Hydrologic and Human Stressors”

As the climate changes, water resources infrastructure and management is key to sustainability. Adapting to increasing hydrologic variability and human stressors is necessary to remain sustainable, but this is challenging in the face of uncertainties such as extreme floods, droughts and human land use. Herman will help communities and ecosystems remain resilient through adaptive planning through uncertainty by advancing the fundamental understanding of stressors facing water resource systems.

AMBAR KULKARNI Chemical Engineering – “Designing Three-Dimensional Active Site Environments in Metal-Organic Frameworks for Oxygen Electrochemistry” Kulkarni’s project aims to design better and cheaper metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for fuel cells applications. MOFs are a popular porous catalyst for the oxygen reduction reaction, but they’re currently made with platinum-based alloys, which are expensive and difficult to scale for mass production. In collaboration with his experimental colleagues, Kulkarni will use his expertise in multi-scale molecular modeling to test new combinations of materials to design more inexpensive and effective MOF catalysts.

XINFAN LIN Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering – “Active Learning of Second-Life Battery Systems by Combining Reinforcement Learning Principles and Device Physics”

Lin will develop an active learning framework that can read current and voltage data and quickly tell users vital information about a second-life electric vehicle (EV) battery’s health, such as capacity, lithium diffusion rate and how well it can accommodate the flow of lithium ions. After electric vehicle (EV) batteries are “retired,” they are sometimes given a second life in lower-power systems that store solar and wind energy. EV batteries are retired with different capacities, or may have been damaged or degraded in their first lives, so they need to be evaluated before they’re put back into service. Lin’s framework will help researchers develop second-life battery systems faster and accelerate the green energy revolution.

SCOTT MCCORMACK Materials Science and Engineering – “Computationally-Assisted Experimental Phase Diagrams”

Using a combination of computation and experiments, McCormack will address the lack of thermodynamic data for ultra-high temperature, multi-component materials in ceramic engineering. Not as much is known about how these materials behave, since collecting data at temperatures as high as 4000°C is challenging. McCormack’s solution is to develop phase diagrams for these materials, through an algorithm that identifies regions with the highest uncertainty and then fills them in with accurate experimental data. Understanding these materials’ behavior is the first step toward using them in materials systems for spacecraft, hypersonics and nuclear reactors.

WILLIAM PUTNAM Electrical and Computer Engineering – “Chip-Scale, Field-Resolved Detection of Mid-Infrared Light”

Putnam plans to improve the resolution and capabilities of infrared spectroscopy by leveraging developments in ultrafast lasers and nonlinear optics. Infrared spectroscopy is widely used to probe molecular composition and is used in everything from early disease detection to environmental monitoring. Putnam will improve the capabilities of these techniques by using ultrafast lasers to sample oscillating, infrared light waves in the time domain for high-speed “field resolved” detection of color combinations, known as absorption patterns.

MARINA RADULASKI Electrical and Computer Engineering – “Scalable Quantum Photonics based on Color Center Integration with Angle-Etched Silicon Carbide Devices”

Radulaski aims to improve quantum technologies by studying color centers, which are optically active defects in semiconductors. Integrating color centers into nanophotonic devices will make quantum hardware more effective and easier to scale, which is key to building an infrastructure for powerful computation and safe communication. She also plans to develop interactive quantum education software and organize outreach with local students to expand the pipeline of students in STEM.

ADITYA THAKUR Computer Science – “Provable Patching of Deep Neural Networks”

Thakur will develop techniques and tools to repair mistakes in deep neural networks (DNNs), a type of machine learning algorithm comprised of a vast, layered web of “neurons” that are trained using data to make complex, probability-based decisions. DNNs have been used for image recognition, natural language processing, medical diagnosis and autonomous cars, but as their complexity and size increases, so does the potential for a disastrous outcome. Thakur proposes provable patching as a solution, which involves making a minimal change to the parameters of a trained DNN to correct its behavior according to a given specification.

KATERINA ZIOTOPOULOU Civil and Environmental Engineering – “Soil Liquefaction Evaluations at Multiple Scales: Reshaping Research, Training, and Education Through Physics-Guided Data Science” Ziotopoulou’s project will investigate new approaches for learning from geotechnical data to inform the next generation of liquefaction evaluation tools. Liquefaction—where soil acts like a liquid—is a leading cause of earthquake damage worldwide, but data are difficult to collect because earthquakes are unique and rare and geosystems are complex and hard to sample. With experimental and field data becoming increasingly available, Ziotopoulou plans to accelerate discoveries in earthquake engineering through cutting-edge methods in data science and develop next-generation tools for reducing damage while increasing societal resilience.

THROUGH THE NEW UC DAVIS CENTER FOR NEUROENGINEERING AND MEDICINE and projects funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) faculty members Sanjay Joshi, Jonathon Schofield and Steve Robinson are pushing the boundaries of the developing field of neuroengineering and finding new ways for humans and machines to work together.

“We have all the resources at UC Davis to be one of the absolute leaders in this field,” said Joshi. “We are one of the few universities in the world with tremendous programs in engineering, neuroscience and medicine. We have the potential to bring these programs together to do some really groundbreaking work.”

established the Neuroengineering and Medicine Initiative, which was met with enthusiasm across campus.

GIVING ASTRONAUTS A HAND

One of his first collaborations in the area was with fellow MAE professor and former astronaut, Steve Robinson. They realized the human-machine interfaces Joshi had developed could make spacewalks safer by giving astronauts a robotic fifth limb—called a supernumerary robot—to increase their capabilities and range of motion.

They recruited MAE assistant professor Jonathon Schofield and neurobiology, physiology and behavior

(NPB) associate professor Wil Joiner—both hired as part of the Neuroengineering and Medicine Initiative—along

CONNECTING

HUMANS

When a person moves a muscle, the brain sends an electrical signal to tell it what to do. Joshi, a former NASA engineer and control systems expert, thought these signals could also be used to help people control machines. His group found that even the most underused muscles in the body could produce a wide range of signals that could be used to control electrical devices.

“Our body is electrically-controlled and you can measure these electrical signals at different places on the body,” he said. “The body acts like a limited signal generator.”

In partnership with the disability community, his group began building neuromuscular-controlled devices that help people with even the most severe disabilities use a prosthetic or even move a computer cursor—devices that improve their everyday lives.

Joshi’s work is part of the rise of neuroengineering, a new field that combines engineering, neuroscience and medicine to restore or add function to humans using techniques from multiple disciplines. A collaborator by nature, he saw the potential to bring together UC Davis’ strengths to create a neuroengineering hub. In 2014, he

with NPB professor Lee Miller and were awarded an NSF grant in 2019 for the project.

Learning to use the arm could potentially be like learning to coordinate two arms and facial muscles to play an instrument. The brain technically sends multiple physiological signals to control multiple limbs, even if one is a supernumerary robot controlled by muscles in a different part of the body, depending on the situation. Learning to use the arm could potentially be like learning to coordinate two arms and facial muscles to play an instrument. Since supernumerary robots are new, however, there could be a significant learning curve.

EXTENDING HUMAN CAPABILITY

Feedback is key to helping ease this learning curve. Feedback can take many forms, or a combination of forms, ranging from an auditory response such as beeping, to visuals such as flashing lights or motion, to a sensation of touch, known as haptic feedback. Based off a person’s responses, says Schofield, researchers can tune the devices to get the user to embody the robot.

“Tool-embodiment occurs when an expert tennis player operates their racket,” said Schofield. “They’re very

By Noah Pflueger-Peters

MACHINESCONNECTING MACHINES

Above Left: Professor Sanjay Joshi

Above Right: Assistant Professor Jonathon Schofield

Right: Sarah O’Meara, the chief scientist in Professor Robinson’s Lab, working with a supernumerary robotic arm. (Steve Robinson/UC Davis)

aware of where it is in space and how to manipulate it, and it functions as an extension of their body.”

Tool-embodiment makes it easier for humans to control these devices precisely, and therefore safely, especially in space where collisions have serious consequences. As part of Robinson’s UC Davis Center for Spaceflight Research, Schofield, Robinson and Joiner are studying visual and haptic strategies to controlling external robotic arms on spacecraft. These arms are used for everything from assembling spacecraft to operating unmanned stations.

By putting stimulators on an astronaut’s arm that vibrate in coordination with the external robot arm, an astronaut would move their real arm and see the robot arm moving along with them, as well as feel a type of vibration when the robot arm grabs hold of an object.

“There’s a tremendous amount of information that you can encode in vibration,” said Schofield. “For example, you can probably distinguish between five or six different apps sending you a notification, just by the way your phone pulses and vibrates.”

Though these techniques developed will be for space, Robinson sees this technology being applicable to any number of situations.

“It’s not just space robotics,” said Robinson. “It could be used for something like robotic surgery—anywhere where getting it wrong could be very critical.”

Professor Steve Robinson

ENGINEERING FOR CHANGE

A challenge in neuroengineering is that every human and every situation is different, so devices need to be adaptable. Signals the body produces can change with time, and the body can also change after using new devices like the ones Joshi, Schofield and Robinson are developing.

“As we use any new tool over and over again, whether it be our cell phone or sporting equipment, our brains and our bodies change, so we’re interested to see what happens as we develop this whole new generation of robotic tools,” said Joshi.

Collaboration with neuroscientists, biologists and doctors is essential say Joshi, Robinson and Schofield, who are excited for the multidisciplinary research opportunities the work will give their students.

“This field requires students to have an understanding of so many different aspects, from sciences to engineering to clinical study, so we’re really interested in forming a new model of how students can gain this knowledge,” said Joshi.

This multidisciplinary approach is a core tenant of the

neuroengineering community at UC Davis, which Joshi now leads as co-director of the UC Davis Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine, along with biomedical engineering professor Karen Moxon and School of Medicine professor Carolynn Patten. The center is guided by the program’s steering committee, which Robinson and Schofield serve on.

As the center grows, so does the number of collaborations. One eventual goal is to bring the Davis campus and the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento closer together and develop a pipeline for neuroengineering innovation from basic research through clinical investigation.

Neuroengineering research is in its infancy, but the work Joshi, Robinson and Schofield are doing at UC Davis is poised to be foundational to the young field, and for people who are disabled or work in hazardous environments.

“I’ve been totally excited about the number of new collaborations that we’ve been able to establish, and the fact that we’re thinking about creative ways we can all work together to help people,” said Joshi. “There’s definitely a lot of momentum.”

Page 10 Bottom photo: Supernumerary robots can give astronauts on the International Space Station an extra hand, making spacewalks safer and more efficient. Graphic courtesy of Sarah O’Meara.

Graphic A: Visualization of electromyography sensors placed on leg muscles to control a robot or prosthetic. Graphic courtesy of RASCAL/K. Lyons.

Graphic B: Myolectric control, or sensing and responding to electric signals produced by muscle movement, is one potential way to control a supernumerary robot. Graphic courtesy of Kenneth Lyons/UC Davis.

Graphic C: Visualization of person using foot movements to control an arm prosthetic, using muscle sensors placed on ankle. Graphic courtesy of RASCAL/K. Lyons.

UC

ENGINEERING STUDENT DESIGN CENTER

By Ashley Han

REPRESENTATION AND DIVERSITY ARE TWO WORDS THAT DIANE BRYANT CHAMPIONS.

With her gift to name the new Engineering Student Design Center at the University of California, Davis, the alumna and information technology executive hopes to inspire women and other underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM; fund essential learning for aspiring engineers; and solidify her legacy as a leader in tech. She graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical and computer engineering.

Bryant’s $6.5 million historic gift is the largest-ever single donation to the College of Engineering by an individual.

The Diane Bryant Engineering Student Design Center — now under construction after the groundbreaking last October and due to open in fall 2022 — will offer hands-on educational experiences and encourage students to envision how they will change the world.

“Diane Bryant’s transformative gift allows us to achieve our college’s top priority for undergraduate education: expanding our engineering design curriculum and renovating the hub of our design ecosystem,” said Jennifer Sinclair Curtis, who served as dean of engineering until stepping down in December.

FROM PRACTICE TO START-UP

The new center will provide an inclusive, supervised

space to practice manufacturing and fabrication techniques and include a student start-up center for entrepreneurial ventures. Team projects and real-world applications will add to students’ business acumen, as they develop the collaborative skills and hands-on experience necessary for success.

It will also stand as an enduring symbol of Bryant’s dedication to diversify the field of engineering.

“My hope is the Engineering Student Design Center provides a visual reminder that everyone can succeed in the field of technology,” Bryant said, noting how rare women and students from historically underrepresented groups are in her field. “I hope

my gift helps to expand the population of students interested in exploring the possibilities of STEM.”

Entirely donor-funded, the ESDC has been made possible by dedicated supporters who have contributed to the $2 billion university-wide fundraising campaign, “Expect Greater: From UC Davis, for the world.” John Baum ’69 and his wife, Mindy, gave an early gift of $5 million to the project. Other key donors include Brian Underwood M.S. ’91 and Carol BlacuttUnderwood; John Wasson ’84 and Gina Wasson; and Joy Dorf and her husband, the late Professor Emeritus Richard C. “Dick” Dorf.

BLAZING A PATH

A first-generation college student who experienced homelessness at 18, Bryant herself succeeded against all odds to go through college and become a leader in her field.

“Our deep appreciation for Diane is beyond words,” Chancellor Gary S. May said. “Her gift will not only transform our engineering students’ educations, it underscores UC Davis’ commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Seeing her name every day will show all students — especially women — that they can achieve anything they work for.”

After earning her degree, Bryant gained an entrylevel position at Intel and would go on to have a distinguished 32-year career at the industry giant, rising to become its most senior technical woman. Her four patented technologies came with the invention of the laptop computer in 1990, including the invention allowing the computer laptop to dock and undock while active.

In 2017, Bryant joined Google as COO of Google Cloud. Today she is the CEO and chairperson of NovaSignal Corp., a medical start-up that develops robotic ultrasound technologies to scan blood flow in the brain.

LEADING SCHOOL FOR WOMEN

“Diane’s experiences as a first-generation college student who has risen to the top of technology leadership showcases what a UC Davis engineering education can provide. Her gift further cements UC Davis’ status as a leading engineering school for women,” Curtis said. In the 2020 QS World University Rankings, UC Davis tied at No. 1 in the nation for diversity and internationalization.

The College of Engineering’s most recent data show 30.1 percent of its undergraduate population are women, well above the 2019 national engineering-program average of 23.9 percent. Similarly, 22.8 percent are underrepresented minorities, compared to 18.5 percent nationwide.

Many factors motivated Bryant’s decision to give back to her alma mater but a powerful one stemmed from her own undergraduate experience. The College of Engineering’s welcoming structure helped her thrive as a first-generation and transfer student in a new, challenging environment.

“Having attended American River College my first two years, UC Davis was my lifeboat. The transition was positively seamless,” Bryant said. “A third of all community college students are the first in their family to attend college and over half are people of color.

The fact that UC Davis explicitly invests in recruiting and developing students from these institutions is a statement of their true belief in the value of a diverse population.”

Bryant noted that the “field of technology is severely underrepresented,” with a majority of the workforce being male and white. Students from all backgrounds should have an equal opportunity to build technology careers, she said, adding that “the industry is so intellectually and financially rewarding.”

CREATING A MORE DIVERSE PIPELINE

She believes that diverse perspectives and experience will also strengthen the field itself, and education is the place to start building that strength.

“Rather than simply preach the importance of greater representation in STEM, I realized I needed to directly

“My hope is the engineering student design center provides a visual reminder that everyone can succeed in the field of technology.”

– DIANE BRYANT

invest in the university engineering system and support the creation of a more diverse pipeline,” she said. In addition to philanthropy, Bryant lectures, mentors, and invests in start-up companies to help nurture a diverse population of young thinkers who will become the influential leaders of tomorrow. Bryant also gives her time to UC Davis, serving on the College of Engineering Dean’s Executive Committee and the Chancellor’s Board of Advisors. She looks forward to watching this industry, which she herself has helped shape, grow and evolve.

“The pace of technology will continue to accelerate. Opportunities constantly emerge, which spark new tracks of innovation — it’s this beautiful, virtuous cycle,” Bryant said.

“The amazing brain power of the engineers graduating from UC Davis will create our future,” she added. “Success will be achieved when there is no longer a majority population in tech, but rather a broad community representing our nation’s population. The opportunities are endless.”

the College of Engineering, we strive to implement the vision set forth by Chancellor May. We’re proud to present Engineering an Inclusive Future,

new communications platform showcasing our efforts through the viewpoints of

remarkable faculty, staff,

THE STUDENT STARTUP CENTER (SSC) at UC Davis is a community of students and mentors interested in using innovation and entrepreneurship to make the world a better place. The center is designed to introduce students to entrepreneurs and early-stage investors, allow students to practice the work of entrepreneurs and early-stage investors and teach students useful knowledge and skills for their journeys as student entrepreneurs.

Based in the College of Engineering, Dawn Strickland is the SSC’s administrator and is responsible for the center’s operations, marketing and outreach. She also serves as lecturer for Launching a Company (ENG 080), a class in which students use modern startup-building methods to launch their own startups.

“I have been interested in entrepreneurship since before I knew it was called that. I concentrated in entrepreneurial management as an undergraduate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and I worked in the startup world before attending business school at New York University’s Stern School of Business to study and experience social entrepreneurship,” said Strickland.

Below she shares her viewpoint on diversity, equity and inclusion in the SSC and some of the resources and opportunities available to students at the SSC.

What is unique about the Student Startup Center at UC Davis?

The SSC’s focus on building something is unique. We believe undergraduates are capable of using entrepreneurship to solve big problems. We encourage students to have the experience of being part of a new venture team while in college and we support

By Rachel Steere

What is your viewpoint of diversity, equity and inclusion at the Student Startup Center and at UC Davis?

I feel proud to work for a university whose chancellor is Black within a university system whose president is Black. I am grateful for Chancellor May’s emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion and for how he has backed up his statements by bringing in leadership at the most senior level to address these issues. I am impressed by what Vice Chancellor Tull accomplished at the University System of Maryland and am excited to see where she will lead us at UC Davis. Her efforts will inform our team in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion within the SSC and the world of high-growth tech entrepreneurship and investing.

Tell us about the Student Startup Center’s efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion.

The SSC’s efforts around diversity, equity and inclusion were ignited by the actions of our student managers. After the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, our student managers wanted to do something to demonstrate our ally-ship with the Black community. We decided that it would be disingenuous to make statements without action to back them up, so we have challenged ourselves to demonstrate with our actions that we are allies.

Our inclusion efforts begin with diversifying the role models that students are exposed to at the SSC. As much as possible, we want all students to be able to see themselves in the examples of entrepreneurs and investors that we present. We have already seen increased engagement when students connect with aspects of our role models’ identities. In addition, a diverse

DAWN STRICKLAND:

Fostering an Inclusive, Entrepreneurial Community

their endeavors. If the venture does not succeed (and we know that most new ventures do not), students will have developed skills valuable in a number of contexts: initiative, empathy, creativity, teamwork, experimentation and problem-solving.

The diversity of thought and skills within our community is also unique. We are a part of the College of Engineering, but we work with undergraduates across the university. This allows our students the opportunity to work in multi-disciplinary teams in which diversity creates opportunities for better problem-solving.

set of role models are able to speak to specific challenges and opportunities that may come with a particular identity, something that one must be uniquely qualified by life experience to do.

To promote diversity within the SSC student community, we have made dedicated efforts to connect with groups of students from backgrounds underrepresented in high-growth tech entrepreneurship and investment. We have partnered with LEADR and AvenueE, College of Engineering programs that support underrepresented students, to ensure that their

students are aware of the experience of our programs. We have also partnered with student clubs such as the Society of Women Engineers to develop programming with them specifically in mind. We created Black America + Entrepreneurship, a First-Year Aggie Connection program designed to support a community of potential Black entrepreneurs as they enter UC Davis.

What resources are available to students at the Student Startup Center?

The first resource available to students is space. Our co-working space is a place where students can meet other students interested in building something new. They can talk about their ideas and find mentors to keep them on the right path. Our makerspace is a place where students can use machines such as a 3D printer and laser cutter to turn their visions into physical reality. In our Visual Thinking Lab, students can produce and experience augmented and virtual realities.

Secondly, we offer classes for academic credit: Intro to Entrepreneurship provides an overview of the theory of entrepreneurship, our Speaker Series course connects students with the lived experience of entrepreneurs and our Launching a Company, Hacking for Defense and PLASMA classes build entrepreneurial skill through hands-on company building.

Third, we host a workshop or event every day. In our workshops, students can learn about topics important to business, technology and prototype development from peer student managers and subject matter experts. Our events allow

student teams receive business education, mentorship and help developing their networks. At the end of 12 weeks, PLASMA participants present the results of their work at a Demo Day in front of a live audience and judges. Winners are selected to receive investments in their businesses.

What do you think the impact of building an inclusive environment will be on the students who are involved in the Student Startup Center?

A diverse group of UC Davis student entrepreneurs continues to take advantage of the support and resources of the center. An inclusive environment at the SSC allows all students to see themselves as high-growth entrepreneurs and investors and allows the community to learn from the experiences of those who would otherwise be underrepresented.

How do you envision diversity, equity and inclusion in the Student Startup Center in the future?

I envision a future in which students currently underrepresented in high-growth tech entrepreneurship and investing will seek out UC Davis and the SSC because of the opportunities and support they know they will find here. I envision a future in which we play a demonstrable role in establishing equity in high-growth tech entrepreneurship and investing.

students to practice thinking like an investor with real life venture pitches and to connect with and learn from visiting entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. We also host teambuilding events and startup-building competitions.

Lastly is our capstone program PLASMA, an early-stage company accelerator that works with a cohort of ten undergraduate teams to aggressively accelerate the growth of their startups within an intense 12-week program. The

Meet our new FACULTY

Md Shamim Ahamed

Assistant Professor, Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Ahamed’s research focuses on thermal environment modeling, energy-efficient design, and control of the agricultural built-environment, and fault detection and diagnosis of HVAC systems. He received his Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Saskatchewan and was working as Research Engineer at Nortek Air Solutions in Saskatoon, Canada before joining UC Davis.

Audrey Fan

Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Neurology

Fan’s lab develops advanced imaging tools to understand the vascular and physiological bases of neurological disorders, diagnose cerebrovascular disease and dementia earlier and prescribe effective treatments for patients. Fan received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was a postdoctoral scholar and instructor at Stanford University before coming to UC Davis.

Zubair Shafiq

Associate Professor, Computer Science

Shafiq’s work is focused on making the internet more private, secure and efficient using network measurement and machine learning techniques.

He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University and comes to UC Davis with faculty experience at the University of Iowa. He received a NSF CAREER award in 2018 and co-leads ProperData, a NSF Frontier Center on protecting personal data flow on the internet.

By Noah Pflueger-Peters

Kelly Kissock

Professor and Chevron Endowed Chair in Energy Efficiency, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Kissock is an international leader in energy efficiency, specializing in energy efficient buildings and manufacturing, heating systems and renewable energy.

He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University and joins UC Davis after 25 years at the University of Dayton, where he led the university’s Renewable Clean Energy Program, Industrial Assessment Center and Ohio Lean Buildings Program. He will be the new faculty director of the UC Davis Energy Efficiency Institute.

Ali Moghimi

Assistant Professor of Teaching, Biological and Agricultural Engineering

Moghimi focuses on teaching in remote sensing and AI applications for precision and digital agriculture. He received his Ph.D. in biological/biosys tems engineering from the University of Minnesota and had been working as a postdoctoral scholar in the BAE department since 2019 before joining the faculty. His background includes experience with bioprod ucts and biosystems science, engineering and management and computer science and engineering.

Julian Panetta

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Panetta builds algorithms that design 3-D printable objects and structures with new structural properties to meet demands for applications across disciplines. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from New York University and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne before joining UC Davis.

Shima Nazari

Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Nazari’s multidisciplinary research focuses on dynamics, control and optimization for autonomous and hybrid electric vehicles. She has M.S. degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering and received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. She has won two best paper awards and attended the Rising Stars in Mechanical Engineering workshop at Stanford University in 2019. She was a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley before joining UC Davis.

Emilie Roncali

Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering and Radiology

Roncali develops quantitative methods for nuclear imaging and therapy for cancer patients, with an emphasis on new technology for positron emission tomography and dosimetry for radionuclide therapy. She received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Ecole Centrale de Paris in France and was a postdoctoral scholar with biomedical engineering distinguished professor Simon Cherry before joining the department’s faculty.

Iman Soltani

Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Soltani studies automation across scales, developing tools, techniques and designs for automated systems in scientific instrumentation, assembly lines and autonomous cars, among other applications. He joins UC Davis from Ford Motor Company’s Greenfield Labs. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he won the Carl G. Sontheimer award for best Ph.D. thesis.

Setareh Rafatirad

Assistant Professor, Computer Science

Rafatirad’s research interests cover several areas including big data analytics, data mining, knowledge discovery and knowledge representation, internet security and applied machine learning. Currently, she is supervising multiple research projects focused on applying machine learning and deep learning techniques on different domains. She received her Ph.D. in computer science from UC Irvine and was an associate term professor of teaching in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology at George Mason University prior to joining UC Davis.

The UC Davis College of Engineering is excited to welcome ten new faculty members for the 2020-21 academic year. This new class of faculty bring multidisciplinary expertise in design, bioimaging, security, automation and control, and energy efficiency to the biomedical engineering, computer science, mechanical and aerospace engineering and biological and agricultural engineering departments. These faculty are eager to address challenges facing society today and collaborate with their new colleagues in the college and across the university.

Alumni Rewind

1990 UC Davis Egg Drop Contest

ALUMNI REWIND: 1990 UC DAVIS EGG DROP CONTEST

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience becoming a materials engineer at UC Davis. Currently, I am president of Elcon Precision in San Jose, CA. Elcon Precision is a materials science manufacturing company that makes space, medical and radio frequency technology products. As a team of materials scientists, we ensure success in critical applications that directly contribute to the preservation and betterment of human life. I have many fond memories of the UC Davis campus, culture and the fantastic people I met while getting my education.

One of my favorite campus events at UC Davis was the annual Egg Drop contest. Every year, it was held in February during National Engineering Week.

Tim Dyer (B.S. ‘90 and M.S. ‘93, materials science and engineering)

In 1989, I was elected President of the UC Davis materials science club, The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, along with my classmate Andrew Olander (B.S. ‘90, materials science and engineering). Our faculty advisor was Professor and Interim Dean Jeffery C. Gibeling, and ironically, although we were a small club, we ran the largest event of E-Week: the annual TMS-UC Davis Egg Drop contest. This contest is the ultimate teaching tool for missioncritical engineering, in which creativity, science, resourcefulness and luck combine to achieve a single purpose: safely transport a raw egg down a six-story building to the center of a target less than two meters wide.

Planning for the event started months beforehand with registering the event with campus clubs in the Memorial Union. The folks in the MU seemed to know nothing of our club or materials engineers; however, they all knew

about and liked the Egg Drop Contest, which made registration easy! We reserved the front steps of the Physics Building for the February 22 event and secured walkie talkies from campus security. We now had official campus permission to throw stuff off the Physics Building!

The Physics Building is perfect for an egg drop contest: it’s six stories tall, has an elevator and the roof has a one-meter high parapet around the perimeter. The main entrance steps to the building lead to a mezzanine area perfectly sized for the drop zone, almost like it was designed with the event in mind.

GENERATING A BUZZ

In December 1989, we started to promote the event around campus. First, we held a contest for a new t-shirt design. The winning design was made by Mike Meier (M.S. ‘86, Ph.D. ‘91, materials science and engineering) depicting a half-circle of egg spectators nervously observing a confident-looking egg descending into a target supported by a parachute. The t-shirts were a hit and sales helped us fund the event. Second, we posted colorful fliers featuring event sponsors such as Woodstock Pizza and Colleen’s Creamery around campus (this was before email or web marketing).

To promote early STEM education, we opened the event to local Davis and Elk Grove elementary schools. I visited some Davis elementary schools and discovered most young students and teachers were excited about participating in our event. All participating elementary schools agreed to hold their own egg drop contest in January, with the winning designs being entered into our larger event. All contest participants, called Droppers, were eligible to win the $100 grand prize or a $50 second prize. We also created a special $25 prize specifically for elementary school students. The rules for the egg drop contest were simple and we used a point scoring system, with a maximum possible score of 100 points. All crafts and documentation (some folks provided calculations) had to be delivered to Bainer Hall two days before the event for judging and weighing. For safety, all crafts had to weigh less than 1,000 grams. Up to 10 points were awarded for the design, another 10 points for crash worthiness and 20 points for accuracy. If you missed the target entirely, your accuracy score was zero. If your egg survived, you were awarded 50 points. Therefore, it was impossible to win the event if your egg broke. Design scores were subjective and determined by Professor Gibeling.

The diversity in egg drop contest entrant designs was impressive and reflected the passion and creativity of UC Davis students. Engineering students from all disciplines participated in the event; therefore we saw a multitude of different solutions to safely transporting an egg down a six-story building.

Photos from the 1990 Egg Drop Contest. (Tim Dyer/UC Davis)

As we all know, engineers can be competitive, so small teams formed and worked to outdo each other. Engineers are also resourceful: it seemed like anything that could be found around campus ended up being incorporated into an egg vehicle. Indeed, we saw plastic bags, drinking straws, salt and pepper shakers taken from the Coffee House, paper towel tubes, foam from car seats, fruits and vegetables, rubber bands, teddy bears, lots of glue and copious amounts of duct tape used in the design and build of vehicles (crafts). In 1990, we had more than 75 entries from UC Davis students and 10 entries from elementary schools.

DROP IT LIKE IT’S HOT

Thursday, February 22, 1990 had finally arrived, and we were excited. It was a cold winter day and we were lucky to have clear weather without any strong winds. Late in the morning, the TMS team assembled at the base of the Physics Building to set up for the event. My twin brother, Ken Dyer (B.S. ‘90, electrical engineering, M.S. ‘93, engineering, Ph.D. ‘98, electrical engineering), also helped us set up and install the official target. The centerpiece for the contest is a two-meter diameter target consisting of red and white concentric rings held down by four orange cones. Since the event can get messy, we covered the target with a large plastic drop cloth.

Harold Kwan (B.S. ‘90, mechanical engineering/ materials science and engineering) and Tricia Clinton (B.S. ‘90, materials science and engineering) staffed the entry table located safely away from the target. All contestants were required to pick up their official contest eggs, all serial numbered, from the entry table to load them into their crafts at the event. All participants were allowed up to five minutes to load their egg into their vehicle to avoid disqualification.

Around noon, spectators started to assemble in anticipation for the event. Playful and excited local

elementary school students soon arrived and settled in groups next to the Physics Building. The parking lot adjacent to Mrak Hall filled up with school buses—many more than we had expected—causing some complaints from campus parking. At 1:00 PM, we started the event with the first crafts being hurled off the roof of the Physics Building. We used official campus walkie talkies to regulate craft traffic and maintain safety in and around the drop zone. The crowd rapidly grew since the event is quite a spectacle. As each craft was launched and landed, the enraptured crowd cheered loudly for each craft, especially if the egg survived. By 2:00 PM, the grassy area in front of Bainer Hall was packed with people: a standing-roomonly crowd. Unexpectedly, news trucks from local channel CBS13 and CNN appeared around the periphery of the crowd. TV cameras and reporters filmed the festivities and interviewed both elementary school and UC Davis students. Event turn out exceeded our expectations and the crowd was (thankfully) well-behaved.

At the end of the contest, winning Droppers were given their prizes and complimentary event t-shirts. We also awarded prizes and t-shirts to the elementary school participants. The TMS club team was tired from all the work and excitement, but deeply satisfied for running such a successful event. That evening, Professor Gibeling received a call from Professor James (Jim) Shackelford informing him that he was pleasantly surprised to see UC Davis College of Engineering, the Egg Drop Contest and our little TMS club featured on CNN.

I will never forget the fun I had during the 1990 egg drop contest and the annual event continued to be hosted by the TMS club until 1994. After that, UC Davis electrical engineering students ran the event until 2004. I still love to visit the campus and continue to support the UC Davis College of Engineering today. The Egg Drop contest taught me how both careful materials selection and wellengineered designs work together to create a successful product where mission failure is not an option.

Kimberly Budil

NAMED LLNL DIRECTOR

By Noah Pflueger-Peters

DR. KIMBERLY BUDIL ’88, ’94, WAS APPOINTED as the next director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), which is dedicated to protecting our nation’s security. She is the first woman to hold this position and started in her new role on March 2, 2021. As lab director, Budil will be responsible for overseeing all programs and setting and implementing the lab’s strategic vision, goals and objectives. She will also become president of Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS) and serve as the lab’s highest liaison with the U.S. Department of Energy, the University of California Office of the President, the LLNS Board of Governors and other external agencies and organizations. At the UC Davis College of Engineering, Budil received her M.S. and Ph.D. in applied science in 1988 and 1994, respectively. At a time when there were fewer women in engineering, she was inspired by her mentor, chemical engineering professor emeritus Ann

Bruce West speaking at the 2016/17 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Medal ceremony. (Reeta Asmai/UC Davis)

Orel, who instilled in her the confidence she’s needed to succeed ever since. Budil first visited LLNL as a master’s student at UC Davis while working in laser programs. After completing her Ph.D., she joined the lab as a postdoctoral scholar in the Weapons and Complex Integration program. Since then, she has held a variety of jobs in Weapons and Complex Integration, Global Security and the National Ignition Facility, as well as Physical and Life Sciences. She also founded the lab’s nuclear counter-terrorism program. Most recently, she served as principal associate director of Weapons and Complex Integration, where she led the lab’s nuclear weapons program.“Because of my UC Davis education, I gained the perseverance to keep going when things look bleak and understand the benefits of immersing yourself in an environment with people who are excellent, and often more skilled than you,” Budil said.

YAYOI TAKAMURA

Shaping the Future of Materials Science and Engineering

By Aditi Risbud Bartl

PROFESSOR YAYOI TAKAMURA is chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis. She joined UC Davis in 2006 and became vice chair of the department in 2017 before becoming chair in July 2020. She is the first woman to lead the department.

Takamura studies the growth of complex oxide thin films, heterostructures and nanostructures, as well as the characterization of the new functional properties that emerge at the interfaces between two dissimilar materials. She aims to develop a fundamental understanding of the interplay between a material’s structural, chemical, magnetic and electronic properties to enable the design of new materials with properties tailored for next-generation spintronic and electronic devices.

As department chair, what are your top priorities for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering?

My priorities include maintaining the best education we can for our undergraduate and graduate students; that’s first and foremost why we’re here as faculty at UC Davis. We recently modified our curriculum to include new degrees and new degree requirements, so I want to implement these modifications fully and then see whether or not they’re the right changes. I also want to interface more with our alumni. For example, we have almost

completely new membership for our Board of Advisors with several members who are UC Davis alumni. They have been incredibly engaged with the department, which has been a lot of fun. Finally, the last big priority is improving our rankings and getting our stature out to the greater materials science and engineering committee about the accomplishments of the faculty, staff and students at UC Davis.

What inspires you in your research efforts?

I tell my students that our research within materials science and engineering is fun physics. We always have applications in mind and that can motivate some people. I definitely think about that when I write proposals for funding agencies! But when it comes to my students, I tell them that what should inspire you is that when we do an experiment, we hypothesize ‘this is what’s going to happen.’ Then most of the time, it’s actually not what happens, right? For some people, they’re disheartened, but for me, it means that there is something new that we have yet to discover and need to figure out. I actually think that’s more inspiring. I think it is important for the student to be smart enough, interested enough, and driven enough to learn something new. That’s the whole point of coming to school. As long as they have that sense of adventure, that’s what I’m looking for and hope to inspire in others.

Where do you see the future of your field of research headed? What innovations lie ahead?

In my research group, we make use of pulsed laser deposition to grow layers of materials, with unit cell precision. In this way, we can grow one type of material, switch to a different type of material, and basically stack different layers to create artificial layered materials. We’ve been focusing on one class of material called complex oxides. What I can see in the future is that growth techniques are getting to the point that we can start combining two completely dissimilar classes of materials together in these stacks, going beyond what we would have originally thought were compatible. What we found is that you can have two bulk materials and know what their individual properties, but if we shrink them down to ultrathin layers, their properties change. Furthermore, the interfaces between these materials can have drastically different properties, even depending on the order that we stack the layers, or the orientation angles between them. How do we know exactly what phenomena are occurring in the interface, and then how do we probe these unusual properties?

What’s your favorite part of working in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering?

Because it’s a smaller department, whether it’s undergrad or grad students, I feel like I know all the students. If I notice a student is having problems in my class, I can reach out to them, sometimes before they will reach out to me. I feel like

the students are more willing to come to me if they have problems because they know that we treat them like family and we want them to succeed. In addition, everyone’s always willing to help each other, which makes for a really collaborative environment.

As a woman and leader in engineering, what advice do you have for students who look to you as a role model?

Throughout my undergrad and graduate student career, I had one only female faculty member in the departments where I studied and the rest were men. It happens that that one female faculty member has been very influential to my career. She took a chance and allowed me to switch research fields from what I was doing as a Ph.D. to work with her as a postdoc and that’s basically the research work that I continue to do now. At UC Davis, we now have four female faculty in the MSE Department.

When I was graduating from my Ph.D. and trying to figure out what I wanted to do, some of the other faculty told me things such as ‘you can’t switch fields,’ or, ‘If you don’t know that you wanted to be a faculty member since you were in middle school, then teaching isn’t the right job for you.’ However, my future postdoc advisor said ‘No, don’t listen to them. I didn’t know either. It’s fine.’ I think it is important to keep in mind that you may meet people who think they’re giving you good advice, but it can be demoralizing. In each case, you should figure out if the advice applies to your actual situation, rather than maybe their own situation. It can also be helpful to reach out to multiple people get a variety of different viewpoints. Sometimes, you may need only 15 minutes with the person to vent, or hear them say ‘Yeah, you’re on the right track.’

I feel like the students are more willing to come to me if they have problems because they know that we treat them like family and we want them to succeed.

– YAYOI TAKAMURA

Aggie Engineers Design

PATHWAY TO MARS

By Noah Pflueger-Peters

WHEN NASA’S PERSEVERANCE ROVER APPROACHED MARS on February 18, 2021, UC Davis mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) alumna Jessica Samuels ’99 and Sara Langberg ’16 watched particularly closely to see their hard work pay off. Perseverance, the largest and most advanced Mars rover to date, will explore the existence of water, launch history’s first extraterrestrial helicopter and serve as the first leg of a mission to collect Martian rock and soil samples and bring them to Earth.

Samuels is a principal systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). For Perseverance, she led the teams behind the sampling and catching system, the spacecraft flight systems engineering development and surface operations. She was thrilled to see the landing video Perseverance recorded, which proved these systems she spent years designing, testing, refining and integrating did indeed work as they should.

“It’s a real treat to get to develop these operations,” said Samuels. “It’s also really rewarding to go through the whole life cycle of the project and then feed our lessons learned back into future operations.”

Langberg was excited to see Perseverance’s precious cargo—the Ingenuity helicopter she built as an aeromechanical engineer at AeroVironment—survive to make the first powered flight on another planet. Ingenuity opens the door for larger and more complex helicopters that can explore greater distances and more difficult terrains on Mars.

“I’m honored and humbled to be a part of it,” said Langberg. “Hardware that I designed and built with my own hands is going to touch the surface of Mars and that’s just mind-boggling.”

Though Samuels and Langberg contributed to Perseverance in different ways and took different paths to the project, their stories both started as MAE undergraduate students at UC Davis.

“Hardware that I designed and built with my own hands is going to touch the surface of mars.”

– SARA LANGBERG

THE POWER OF TEAMWORK

Samuels’ first engineering team experience was through Aerobrick, a competition team that designs, builds and tests small remote-controlled aircraft. Though she learned a lot from her classes, her experiences with these design projects inspired her the most.

“I can’t express enough that you have to be hands-on [in engineering],” she said. “You have to feel it, see it and know physically how things work in order to apply it.”

Aerobrick was where she developed her teamwork skills and learned how to communicate with teammates across disciplines and specialties.

“UC Davis provided a lot of opportunities for getting hands-on building experience,” she said. “Working together to build something is where you really see if you understood what you were learning.”

Teamwork is critical for her role at JPL, as she coordinates with the mission’s engineering and science teams to define the capabilities each instrument needs to do its job, support the other instruments and operate safely and effectively. Now that Perseverance is on the ground, she’ll continue working with her fellow engineers and the science team as they test all the components during commissioning.

“As systems engineers, we like to think of ourselves as the glue of this spacecraft—defining all the interconnections, communications and the type of information needed to operate the spacecraft,” she said. “We have these high-level requirements of collecting samples and being able to live and drive 20 km for one Martian year, but we’re the ones who figure out what it means to actually be able to do that.”

One of Langberg’s formative experiences at UC Davis was working as an undergraduate researcher in MAE professor Steve Robinson’s lab. Robinson, a former astronaut, inspired her with the world of possibilities in aerospace engineering. She also learned to work with others while working on a project to design and test a flow control system with intelligent vortex generators.

“Professor Robinson is a huge mentor for me,” she said. “He really made me passionate about learning, asking questions and thinking critically. I’d always been interested in aerospace, but he really got me excited about what’s possible.”

This curiosity, passion for aerospace and love of hands-on projects continue to compel her at AeroVironment.

“I still feel very much like I’m in that learning environment at UC Davis,” she said. “I’m still building things, I’m constantly asking questions about the systems I’m working on and I’m learning new skills every day. Having that curiosity and passion for trying things feeds well into a program like Ingenuity.”

Top photo: Ingenuity, NASA’s first Mars helicopter, on the surface of Mars before deployment. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Bottom photo: Langberg with Ingenuity. (Sara Langberg/AeroVironment)

Top photo: Perseverance touches down on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Photo above: Langberg with Ingenuity, NASA’s first Mars helicopter. (Sara Langberg/UC Davis)

Photo below: Samuels at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where Perseverance was designed and built. (Kristy Peterson/UC Davis)

25)

FROM SHOP ASSISTANTS TO AEROSPACE ENGINEERS

Samuels and Langberg both worked as student assistants in the campus machine shop, now known Engineering Student Design Center (ESDC) and each cite it as a huge influence in their careers.

Langberg loved working with the ESDC staff and her fellow student assistants as she was introduced to hands-on learning and prototyping. Her ESDC experience also fostered her love of mechanical systems.

“I loved every minute of it,” she said. “Working with the shop staff was a lot of fun and it taught me how to look at things from a manufacturing standpoint and learn different ways of building things. That hands-on building experience in the ESDC was priceless and what really enabled me to excel.”

She uses these skills every day at AeroVironment. Every part of Ingenuity needed to be optimized specifically for this project, so Langberg did a lot of rapid R&D prototyping, mostly on the helicopter’s landing gear. She describes her routine as “build it, test it, see what works; learn fast, fail fast, make it better and try again.”

“There’s no textbook to tell you how to design a helicopter for Mars,” she said. “Our biggest challenge was the ‘unknown unknowns’—things that we didn’t know that we would need to expect and design for.”

Samuels remembers the culture of openness and learning she found at the ESDC, and how comfortable she felt asking questions to the staff, or her professors. She said that same culture permeated the college and fondly remembers visiting open-door labs in Bainer Hall and Kemper Hall simply because she was interested in what was going on.

“That created a culture that I could bring to the workplace,” she said. “It’s important not to be afraid to ask if you don’t know something, because there will always be things that you don’t know. The whole point is to continue to learn.”

These are concepts Samuels plans to use in the next phase of the project, both in leading the surface operations team and in thinking about the next phase of the project to bring the Martian samples home.

“One of the perks of the job is that we get to give back by sharing what we do and inspiring the next group to come work with us,” she said. “Especially with our next leg of this mission, we need people to help us get these samples home.”

DISTINGUISHED ENGINEERING ALUMNI RECIPIENTS

By Rachel Steere

Each year, the UC Davis College of Engineering recognizes outstanding alumni whose professional and personal achievements bring special honor to the college. This year, the college is pleased to honor Michael Child, Connie Chang-Hasnain, Prem Jain, Claude Laguë and Stephen McCord as 2021 Distinguished Engineering Alumni Medal (DEAM) recipients. This award is the highest recognition presented by the college to alumni. These five alumni will be honored at the college’s Alumni Celebration later this year.

Michael (Mike) Child

Senior Advisor, TA Associates Electrical Engineering, B.S. ’76

Mike Child received his B.S. in electrical engineering from UC Davis in 1976 and his MBA from Stanford University in 1980.

“The most important thing I learned at UC Davis was that I was not going to be a great engineer, so I had better look for something else as a career,” said Child. “I explored medicine, and I quickly found that was not a fit. I considered law, but there seemed to be too much writing and typing. So I settled on general management as a potential career path. When that decision was made, it informed my choice of elective classes, outside activities at UC Davis, summer jobs and led me to apply to graduate business school.”

For more than 30 years, Child has served as a senior advisor for TA Associates, a large global growth private equity firm. TA Associates provides professionals that help build great companies and assist owners to meet their business goals.

Child also served as chair of the UC Davis Foundation Board from 2014-2016 and is currently an executive trustee. He is a member of the Dean’s Executive Committee for the College of Engineering, advising the dean about fundraising goals and he has previously been on the Graduate School of Management advisory board. He is also on the investment committee for the UC Davis Foundation.

His advice to students and young alumni is to think of their career as a series of investments and to look for growth.

“During your career, you will only be able to work for a limited number of companies. Choose wisely. Don’t be afraid of making lateral moves if they help you work in a better company, or if they enhance your knowledge and future marketability,” said Child. “Keep in touch with your classmates and if possible, get involved with a philanthropic endeavor.”

(continued on page 30)

DISTINGUISHED

Connie Chang-Hasnain

Associate Dean for Strategic Alliances, UC Berkeley College of Engineering Electrical Engineering, B.S. ’82

Connie Chang-Hasnain received her B.S. from UC Davis in 1982 and her M.S. and Ph.D from UC Berkeley in 1984 and 1987, respectively, all in electrical engineering. Since 2014, she has been the associate dean for strategic alliances at the UC Berkeley College of Engineering.

Chang-Hasnain made pioneering contributions in semiconductor optoelectronic devices and materials and physics, with focus on nano-photonic materials. She pioneered vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers and developed several applications such as the computer mouse, sensor and transmitters in optical fiber communication and biomedical imaging. Her research achievements are reflected in her publications, numerous scholar citations and awards.

Chang-Hasnain has also provided numerous and effective services to the optics and photonics profession and the community. She has served as a chair or co-chair for many professional top-tier conferences including SPIE Photonics West, the most prestigious conference in optics. She is fellow of the Industrial Electronic Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Optical Society, as well a member of the National Academy of Inventors and the National Academy of Engineering.

“I benefited from a great engineering school with excellent professors and teaching assistants who were passionate about their work and eager to guide; smart classmates who dreamed big, but were always kind with peers; and a great neighborhood that was simple, kind and open to outsiders. My two years at UC Davis were transformative to my life and career,” said Chang-Hasnain.

Her advice to engineering students and young alumni is to dream big; think bold; be humble; and work really hard.

Prem Jain

CEO, Pensendo Systems Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, M.S. ’77

Prem Jain received his B.S. from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in 1973 and his M.S. from UC Davis in 1977, both in electrical and computer engineering.

Jain has been a prolific entrepreneur since graduation and is currently CEO of Pensando Systems. Prior to this role, he was the director of engineering at Crescendo Communications, which is a networking switch company acquired by Cisco in 1993. Together with his team, he co-founded a string of startups that were acquired by Cisco Systems, the last being Insieme Neworks, a software-defined networking company purchased in 2013.

“At UC Davis, I received hands-on experience of digital and analog circuit design that was invaluable. I have used these skillsets throughout my engineering career and would not be where I am today without this critical education,” said Jain.

Jain is currently serving on the UC Davis Department of Computer Science’s Industrial Advisory Board and previously served on the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s Board of Advisors in the early 2000s. He also recently received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Cal Aggie Alumni Association, which honors a UC Davis graduate whose entire lifetime since graduation reflects exemplary and outstanding performance and achievements.

“We all know engineers are some of the smartest people in the world, capable of doing anything,” said Jain. “We are now fortunate to live in a time where engineers are becoming the world’s top business leaders and the trend is only going to continue to grow. No matter where you are in your academic career, you can begin now. All it takes is a good idea, hard work and a supportive environment.”

Claude Laguë

Professor of Agricultural Engineering, University of Ottawa Agricultural Engineering, Ph.D. ’89

Claude Laguë received his B.S. and M.S. from Université Laval in Canada in 1982 and 1986, respectively and his Ph.D. from UC Davis, all in agricultural engineering. Laguë is professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Ottawa and is well respected for his teaching and innovation in machine design, soil mechanics and environmental engineering. He has held many leadership roles at different universities throughout his career including the dean of engineering at the University of Ottawa.

“The very demanding course work that was required as part of the Ph.D. program in engineering at UC Davis provided me with knowledge and skills that were extremely useful in adapting existing courses and developing new courses when I started my academic career as a professor,” said Laguë.

Laguë has successfully worked to increase the number of women in engineering and improve diversity overall. He has advanced engineering education and student entrepreneurship throughout his career. He has made outstanding contributions to the profession through his technical innovations, academic leadership and community service.

Laguë says the risk-taking attitude prevalent in California further sparked his interest for innovation and entrepreneurship and his engineering education prepared him to not only to compete with, but often lead, his professional peers. Laguë’s advice to students is to explore and try to experiment as much as possible to find the path that will bring you satisfaction in your professional career.

Stephen McCord

President, McCord Environmental Inc. Civil and Environmental Engineering, M.S. ’95, Ph.D. ’99

Stephen McCord received his M.S and Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. He says the educational experience he received from UC Davis gave him a clearer understanding of what he didn’t know, the humility to accept that he will never know everything, an appreciation for the variety of technical expertise that can tackle environmental problems synergistically and the value of collaboration.

“I learned so much fascinating knowledge about water quality that it remains my professional passion today. As an engineer, I loved taking science courses, and then ‘making it real’ in my engineering classes. Because that’s what engineers do—apply science to solve problems,” said McCord. “What I was learning was relevant everywhere and transportable. And that was wonderful, because I sure like traveling.”

McCord is now the president of McCord Environmental, Inc. and was named a Certified Lake Professional by the North American Lake Management Society. He has led the design and management of technically challenging water projects in rivers, lakes, wetlands, deltas and bays, including mercury bioaccumulation, eutrophication and drinking water quality throughout California, the United States, and internationally, including Australia, Canada, Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa. McCord’s advice to other engineering students and to other young alumni is to “strive to create beauty in everything you do; do what you have to do, when you have to do it, the best you can do it, every time; and never give up.”

By Lisa Howard

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, AIJUN WANG, A BIOMEDICAL ENGINEER and associate professor in the UC Davis Department of Surgery, became interested in improving arteriovenous (AV) grafts used during kidney dialysis.

AV grafts are synthetic medical tubes that are surgically placed in a renal patient’s arm or leg. During dialysis, the AV grafts provide easier access to an artery and vein and better blood flow.

AV grafts, however, have a high failure rate due to blood clots, narrowing of the vein or artery, and infections. “Only 23 percent are still functioning after one year, and only four percent are still functioning at two years,” said Wang.

According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 661,000 people in the United States have kidney failure, with approximately 468,000 receiving dialysis. Wang wondered if it might be possible to decrease AV graft failures by creating an environment inside the tubing that mimics the body’s own natural vascular system. Essentially, what if the tubes could be made to resemble a vein or artery on a microscopic level?

“The idea was to use the graft to grow a new vascular environment,” said Wang. “I was interested in finding a method to optimize the surface of the tubing to be biologically smart.”

Veins and arteries are lined with a single layer of endothelial cells. These cells line all blood vessels and have many functions, including maintaining blood flow and regulating blood clots. To find a molecule that might be able to attract just a single layer of endothelial cells onto the surface inside the AV graft, Wang turned to his colleague, Kit S. Lam.

Lam is a professor and the chair of the UC Davis Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine. He invented a chemistry method known as “one-bead one-compound” (OBOC) combinatorial technology, which allows for the rapid synthesis and screening of millions of chemicals at a time. As part of his earlier research, Lam used the OBOC technology to identify several chemical compounds that target various cancer cells. He successfully used some for cancer imaging and drug delivery. Some of the compounds Lam identified also bind to endothelial cells.

“We were able to leverage the existing research to identify several compounds that could be used to attract endothelial cells,” said Lam. “This allowed us to quickly focus on compounds that would be appropriate for the specific requirements of the AV graft.”

One challenge Wang and Lam faced is that endothelial cells have certain binding properties similar to platelets — small cell fragments in the blood that form clots. So first, they had to eliminate any compound that could attract platelets. In addition, they needed to find a safe compound that attracted endothelial cells but not other circulating blood cells.

Attracting other undesirable cells could promote the narrowing of the tube. To identify these compounds, Lam and Wang synthesized several candidate compounds, each separately on tiny microbeads. They then tested the ability of these microbeads to capture endothelial cells, platelets and other blood cells.

Wang describes the molecule he and Lam eventually identified as “just sticky enough.”

“These molecules function like the kid’s toy, Sticky Hands,” said Wang. “These ‘sticky hand’ molecules, coated on the inside surface of the implanted graft, grab only endothelial cells and endothelial progenitor cells from circulation. They essentially create a living endothelium on the graft.”

Wang and Lam began working with Alyssa Panitch, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Biomedical Engineering, on applying the “sticky hand” molecules to vascular applications.

Panitch’s lab focuses on vascular technologies to improve interactions between blood cells and the vascular wall to improve healing after vessel injury and control the inflammatory response.

UC Davis professors Aijun Wang, Kit Lam and Alyssa Panitch.

‘Just Sticky Enough’ Compound May Help Patients with Kidney Disease

“They immediately saw parallels between their research and the research I was doing,” said Panitch. “Expanding my work to improving the interface between synthetic grafts and blood was a natural move.”

Panitch also brought her experience as an entrepreneur to the team, having been involved in the launch of three startups, including Symic Biomedical Inc.

“Startups are a great way to nurture these technologies and bring them greater visibility. It’s a way to gain resources for commercialization and to get access and interest from medical technology companies,” said Panitch. “It is always exciting to push technology that you believe will improve human health out the door.”

By Lisa Howard

Untreated (left) and treated (right) small diameter vascular grafts six weeks after transplantation in a rat carotid artery bypass model study. (VasoBio)

Their early studies have shown promise. In one study with rats, five out of six untreated grafts were obstructed after six weeks. By comparison, only one out of six of the treated grafts was obstructed. Later studies on larger animals showed a similar pattern.

In 2020, Wang entered the innovation into a contest sponsored by the Kidney Innovation Accelerator. The public-private partnership between the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) is designed to accelerate innovation in preventing, diagnosing and treating kidney diseases.

In August 2020, Wang won the contest and was awarded $500,000 to continue developing long-lasting vascular grafts.

PERFECTING THE PROTOTYPE

The team received support from Venture Catalyst. Wang was a STAIR Grant recipient and participated in the Biotech Innovation Gallery (BIG) Accelerator. The BIG Accelerator program provides campus innovators and UC Davis-associated startups with industry mentoring, business model and investor pitch coaching and assistance in preparing to engage with investors. Wang also showcased the technology during the JP Morgan HealthCare conference in 2020.

The startup is in a very early stage. “There is still a lot of technical, detailed troubleshooting work to get this prototype from the lab to a manufacturer,” explained Wang.

The company is focused on improving AV grafts for dialysis patients, but the technology may have applications for other medical devices and implants, minimizing blood clot formation and infection.

“This is a biomaterial-based strategy,” said Wang. “I used the term ‘living endothelium.’ Even though the device doesn’t have any live cells, eventually it will have live cells on top of it and support endothelial cells to live long. More importantly, those will be the patients’ own cells, so there’s no rejection and no donor matching needed,” he said.

Bill Tucker is the interim associate vice chancellor for Innovation and Technology Commercialization and oversees Venture Catalyst. “VasoBio is a terrific example of UC Davis’ culture of interdisciplinary innovation. Faculty with expertise in biology, engineering and chemistry pooled their knowledge and resources to devise a novel medical technology.”

“By identifying a potential solution for the high failure rate of AV grafts, they may be able to improve treatment for the hundreds of thousands of people in the United States who receive kidney dialysis,” said Tucker. “We are happy to have helped launch VasoBio and supported the company with our Venture Catalyst programming. We look forward to following the progress of this exciting technology.”

AvenueE

Joins the College of Engineering

AvenueE IS A PROGRAM DESIGNED TO HELP COMMUNITY COLLEGE TRANSFER STUDENTS smoothly

transition to UC Davis, and ultimately, a career in engineering or computer science. It aims to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with the goal of creating a new generation of promising STEM talent and leadership.

This program was developed by UC Davis and founding corporate partner, Chevron, in collaboration with Los Rios, Peralta, San Joaquin Delta and Contra Costa Community College districts. Originally housed in the provost’s office, AvenueE became a part of the College of Engineering in mid-2020.

The Koret Foundation recently granted $4 million to undergraduate career-preparation programs across UC Davis, including AvenueE. This funding will provide a $2,500 scholarship to each student during their first year and help test and develop the best services to retain and graduate transfer students, positioning them to have successful careers in engineering.

NEW Avenue E LEADERSHIP

Yesenia Cervantes-Tucker

AvenueE Director

Yesenia Cervantes-Tucker will work to eliminate barriers that prevent full participation of women and underrepresented minorities in engineering and computer science. She has more than 16 years of experience in academic programs that increase college access, preparation and persistence for first-generation, low-income, marginalized and minoritized students.

Shannon Long AvenueE Program Coordinator

“AvenueE students are tremendously talented scholars who come to UC Davis with valuable skills, assets and a desire to affect change in their communities and the world. We know that AvenueE students will be the intellectual and creative leaders of tomorrow.”

– Yesenia Cervantes-Tucker

Shannon Long has an extensive background in teaching, mentoring and advising, as well as program development, administration, assessment and mental health. Her expertise will help the college improve retention, graduation rates, time-to-degree and achievement gaps of first-generation and underrepresented minority college students.

https://avenuee.engineering.ucdavis.edu

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