College of Engineering Newsletter by UMass Dartmouth

Fall 2017 Newsletter

Undergrad internships engage students in cutting edge Navy research in array processing. From left to right: Dr. Laura Kloepper (Asst Prof of Biology at St Mary’s College in South Bend, IN), Ray Bautista (UMassD ELE BS 2015, MS 2017, currently at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, RI), Colin Ryan (UMassD ELE 2015, MS 2017, currently at Bose Corporation in Framingham, MA) and Dr. John Buck (Professor, ECE).

The College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth received recognition for its continued excellence. This fall, the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth was in the spotlight after it received recognition for its continued excellence. This September, ABET Inc., the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology, renewed the college’s accreditation for its undergraduate degree programs in civil engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. The accreditation is good for the next six years. The college’s undergraduate bioengineering program was accredited for the first time, which included all of the department’s past classes, beginning with the first program graduates in 2014. The endorsement will also run through September 2023. “The evidence of the quality of our academic programming can really be found in the success of our graduates, both in engineering practice and in graduate studies,” said Interim Dean Ramprasad Balasubramanian. Students who graduated from the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth have gone on to work for companies such as the Naval Underwater Warfare Center, Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney and UTC Aerospace Systems to name just a few, said Raymond N. Laoulache, Interim Associate Dean at the college. He added that others have gone on to complete graduate studies at Cornell University, to join Tufts University for bioengineering research and to study aerospace and aeronautical engineering at the University of South Carolina.

ABET is a nonprofit, nongovernmental company that accredits programs in applied and natural science as well as computing, engineering and engineering technology. The board gets the help of more than 2,200 experts in industry, academia and government to accomplish that work, and is recognized nationally. The accreditation is voluntary and puts schools under the microscope. ABET evaluates the programs and visits the campus. To become accredited, programs are expected to set learning outcomes and goals for students, and a continuous quality improvement process of student learning based on results. Faculty, students, staff and employers work together to achieve accreditation. “The reaccreditation of our long-standing, highly regarded engineering programs and the accreditation of the bioengineering program reflect the unwavering commitment of the faculty, staff and administration in the development and continuous improvement of the academic programs we deliver to our students,” Balasubramanian said. For UMass Dartmouth, accreditation translates into confidence: employers are assured that the programs prepare successful students as their future employees. Students and their parents can be confident in choosing a vetted school. Other prestigious schools with engineering programs that were also accredited by ABET include Boston University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Northeastern University. Provost Karim Mohammad stated “This most recent ABET reaccreditation reaffirms the excellence of our programs, world-class faculty and highly successful students.” n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

State of the College Greetings alumni and friends,

The College of Engineering is incredibly proud of all the work by faculty, staff and students who contributed to our recently awarded ABET Accreditation. Read our cover story to learn more. The College of Engineering said goodbye to its largest graduating class in May and welcomed another stellar group of incoming students this fall. Our engineering enrollment at both the undergraduate and graduate levels reflects our students’ strong belief in the high quality of our engineering programs. Employers trust our reputation for preparing well-rounded, well-educated engineers. Our graduates are exceptional problem-solvers with outstanding technical skills, who communicate effectively to both a technical and non-technical audience. We teach them to work effectively in multidisciplinary teams. As alumni and friends of the College, we appreciate you hiring our graduates and encourage you to continue to recruit on campus. With your support, we constantly strive to improve the educational experience we offer our students. We have launched a campaign to renovate several engineering instructional laboratories, beginning with the Environmental Engineering laboratory. We plan to update the Foundations of Engineering, Robotics and Automation, Materials Science and Advanced Manufacturing labs, as well as the Electrical and Computer Engineering Learning Commons. Keep reading to find out more about a Fulbright Scholar’s research on global weather patterns in the Indian Ocean; a faculty member’s research on mitigating concussion and CTI for our war fighters and athletes; and another’s research studying the long-term effects of diabetes on bone density. We have faculty working on creating biosensors, which can minimize sudden-infant-death-syndrome (SIDS) and provide real-time monitoring of heart-health. We continue to grow our expertise in marine technologies, conducting fundamental and applied research of naval relevance. Our students continue to find success in world-class organizations such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon. Student exploration and faculty research results impact industry bottom line and community growth. What’s happening at the College of Engineering at UMass Dartmouth? All of these things, and more. Thank you, because this is possible with your ongoing support.

COE by the Numbers

1,181

Total number of Undergraduate students

328

Total number of Graduate students

259

New First-Year students

New Transfer students

254

Number of B.S. degrees awarded

Thank you,

Ramprasad Balasubramanian Interim Dean and Professor of Engineering

103 Number of M.S. & Ph.D. degrees awarded

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Fall 2017 Newsletter

We’d like to hear from you… Please update your contact information.

Chancellor Update

Our goal is to get email addresses for all College of Engineering alumni. You may email your information to coe@umassd.edu or mail to College of Engineering, UMass Dartmouth, 285 Old Westport Rd., Dartmouth, MA 02747-2300.

College of Engineering Newsletter Newsletter Editor

Ramprasad Balasubramanian, Interim Dean

Editor/writer Lara Stone, Advancement Officer, UMass Dartmouth Foundation/ University Advancement Writers

Renee Buisson Professor Donald Foster Carol Kozma Robert McCarthy ’97, MA ‘15

Contributing Kevin DeAquair Designer Photographs

Joseph Biron Christian Ellis NASA Amit Tanndon UMass Dartmouth Photographics

Dear friends of the College of Engineering, I am proud to have been selected to lead the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and to work with its impressive faculty, staff, students, and alumni. When I considered the opportunity to enter the search process, I did my homework regarding the academic strengths of the university, and was most impressed by what I learned about the College of Engineering. I arrived in July, and in September I was pleased to learn that the college’s undergraduate degree programs in civil, computer, electrical and mechanical engineering were re-accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, Inc. through September 30, 2023. And the undergraduate bioengineering program earned its initial accreditation, retroactive to 2014, the year of its first graduating class. This accreditation is also effective through September 30, 2023. The ABET reaccreditation affirms the excellence of our programs, the expertise and commitment of our world-class faculty, and the success of our students. I am continually impressed by the research and teaching initiatives of the faculty, and our student outcomes in job and graduate program placement. UMass Dartmouth has evolved to meet society’s changing educational needs since its founding in 1895. Today, as a tier one national research university, I can say with conviction that we provide a private college educational experience and public university value. With nearly 400 full-time faculty and 8,600 students in five colleges and three schools, including Massachusetts’ only public law school, we are an economic force in the Commonwealth and beyond. I look forward to a bright future for our university and to working with you to tell the UMass Dartmouth story. Thank you for your continued commitment to and involvement with the College of Engineering and our great university. Best regards,

n Robert E. Johnso Robert E. Johnson, Ph.D. Chancellor

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

The Industrial Internet of things Joe Biron works at PTC where he is the Chief Technology Officer of Internet of Things. But the term “Internet of Things” was only coined in 2009, Biron said, four years after he had graduated from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth— and to many people, that term’s meaning is still obscure. In 2016, Biron gave a TED Talk as part of TEDx New Bedford at the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center. There, he gave a brief history on the topic: Originally, Internet of Things, or IoT, was known as machine to machine, the idea that one machine can communicate with another. Biron used a radiation therapy device to make his point, a complex machine that is vital to treat cancer patients. “If something went wrong with it, instead of sending a dude in a truck to roll out there and several hours later maybe find out that some part was needed, wouldn’t it be cool if we could remotely troubleshoot and remotely diagnose the problem?” Biron asked during his talk. Today, IoT devices are all around us, he said. Phones communicate with thermostats to remotely change temperatures and machines that read weather systems can turn on sprinklers when needed, reducing waste and eliminating a chore. But Biron works in a different area: the Industrial Internet of Things. His focus is not on making homes comfortable, but solving the world’s “grand challenges,” he said. Standing on stage during his talk last year, Biron said that by 2050, it is estimated that agricultural output “will have to increase by 70 percent” for the 9.6 billion people expected on Earth. Using IoT, sensors in the earth at an agricultural facility could tell in real time exactly when and how much water is needed, relay that information to irrigation systems and optimize growth.

Sitting at a local Starbucks coffee shop one recent afternoon, Biron said that today PTC is merging IoT with another tool: augmented reality, or inserting digital images into the physical world. To explain augmented reality, Biron took his cellphone and opened the new “Ikea Place” mobile application, released by the furniture store. His phone screen switched to camera mode, and Biron pointed the phone to the floor and the coffee shop’s counter, scanning the area. A few seconds later, furniture options popped up on his screen, and Biron selected a chair. Still pointing his phone in camera mode at the floor and counter, a 3D-size image of the chair in its actual height, length and width popped onto his screen, showing how the chair would fit at Starbucks. People can now design their entire home with Ikea furniture without setting foot in the store, allowing everyone to channel their inner interior decorator. That’s convenient, but how does augmented reality relate to Industrial IoT? This time, Biron uses YouTube, where PTC has uploaded several videos: In one video, Jens Tuma, Head of Customer Service at KTM, a company that builds offroad motorcycles, explains that augmented reality solves one of KTC’s hurdles: a lack of experienced technicians to fix motorbikes. In the video, a technician holds an IPad opened to a mobile application developed by PTC. It lists a series of motorcycles he has to fix, and he selects the first one. The technician selects a tab labeled “diagnostics.” Data about the motorbike has already been collected by the mobile application that diagnoses the issue for the technician. The mobile application informs the technician that the problem comes from the “Lambda Probe” and suggests checking the plug connections. Now, the technician hits another tab; this one is labeled “SHOW ME,” and here is where augmented reality comes in. The mobile application switches to camera mode, and the

technician points it to the motorcycle, scanning it. As one of the motorcycle’s panel comes into the IPad’s viewfinder, the digital image of a green hexagon suddenly pops onto the screen, encircling it. At the bottom of the screen, instructions also pop up: “The connection of the Lambda Probe is behind PANEL D1.” Without having to diagnose the issue himself, and with augmented reality showing him how, the technician can fix the motorbike. When Biron speaks about his work, his passion comes through: he uses words like “wow!” and “awesome!” But Biron took a circuitous route to his current profession. Biron graduated from B.M.C. Durfee High School in 1990. Back then, “It didn’t occur to me that computer science was a field of study,” he said. Biron enrolled at UMass Dartmouth and took engineering classes, but by his sophomore year, for many different reasons, he had dropped out. He worked as a programmer, and later, entered the financial sector. Eventually, he found his way back to campus. “I could not be a college dropout my whole life,” Biron said. “It was about obtaining my own status as an educated person.” Biron balanced a full-time job with school, and took classes “here and there” he said. By 2002, he had decided to get a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Science. He found several mentors at the University, including Professor Richard Upchurch, who “nudged” him toward the field of factory automation, he said. Upchurch shared his own experience in the business world with his students. “He cared very deeply about educating the students beyond the curriculum,” Biron said. Today, Biron lives in Dartmouth with his wife, a nurse at Capeway Adult Day Center, and two children. They were all there when he walked across the stage in 2005, graduating Cum Laude. “You want to be an educated person,” Biron said. “That’s how I coach my kids.”. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Fall 2017 Newsletter

How did they do that? When the middle schoolers on campus got ready to present the smartphone games they had invented to their parents, Vidhyashree Nagaraju was not sure what to expect.

Nagaraju said she believes that the presentation motivated the children: “They take it as a challenge… they want to show that they are really good.”

“We were just guessing that they would come up with some simple games,” (similar to the popular application Candy Crush), said Nagaraju, one of the instructors at the week-long summer camp.

And parents were impressed:

But instead, the 21 middle-school aged participants developed complex mobile application games that left the instructors wondering, “How did they do it?” Nagaraju said. This is the first year that the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth hosted a mobile application summer camp for middle schoolers from the New Bedford, Fall River and Dartmouth public schools.

“We could not believe that UMass [Dartmouth] was doing something like this,” said Dr. Shakhnoza Kayumova, whose son and daughter participated in the summer camp. In the past, she would have had to take them to Boston to access similar opportunities, she said. Eleven-year-old Sayid Achilov, Dr. Kayumova’s son, created an application called the “Magic Eight Ball,” similar to the popular toy. His application allowed people to ask a question, physically shake their phone or tablet, and an answer would appear.

At summer camp, the students were introduced to different games and told how they worked. They learned about logic and how to use variables. Early on, they were told that to receive a certificate of completion, they would have to create their own Android applications and present them to their parents.

She also pointed out that middle school is an important age to introduce girls to computer science. Young women go through many emotional and physical changes at that age, and are sometimes peer-pressured into particular fields, such as art or law, Nagaraju said. “When you can give them an opportunity to prove to themselves that they are good in programing or some computing education… they will think about not letting society define what they should do,” she said.

Nagaraju, a Ph.D. student who researches software reliability and the President of the Society of Women Engineers at UMass Dartmouth, grew up in a rural part of India. She volunteered at orphanages where she met young girls with limited schooling.

The children used the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s App Inventor that makes it easy for people of all ages to create mobile applications, according to its website.

“The kids will come up with great questions like “how is it working?” and that is where we enter into the picture, and we give them descriptions of the underlying programming,” she said.

“An introduction, demo, hands-on activities, and allowing them to develop their own apps gives them confidence to learn the rest on their own, or at least to consider that as an option in future academics,” she said.

But her desire to help people access a solid education is rooted well beyond campus.

“The main objective of this program is to bring some interest in young children toward computing or computing education,” (such as programing), said Nagaraju, one of several camp instructors.

The App Inventor allows people to drag and drop colorful modules that emulate a function in the mobile application they are building, rather than tediously writing out hundreds of lines of code, Nagaraju said. That makes the learning fun, because students get an immediate result, she added.

Asked why she believed it was important to run such camps, Nagaraju replied that it is UMass Dartmouth’s responsibility to help local school children explore possible career opportunities.

His sister, Feyza Achilova, 13, an avid reader, realized that not everyone enjoys reading books, but many people spend time reading text messages on their phone. She created an application that turned a book into the format of text messages. Dr. Kayumova, an Assistant Professor at UMass Dartmouth focused on STEM education and teacher development, appreciated that the children at summer camp could develop their own applications, rather than fulfilling a “cookie-cutter” activity. “It was amazing,” she said of her two children who attend Dartmouth Middle School. “They utilized the knowledge they learned [at camp], but they made the knowledge theirs.”

“It used to bug me that… if there is somebody who can teach them for free, maybe they will learn a lot of things because they [have] such a high potential,” she said. “They have their dreams.” Due to its success, the university has planned to also host the Android mobile application workshop next summer. They also want to host a second one, where children will develop IOS based mobile applications, which would be compatible with IPhones. It turns out, the children were not the only ones who enjoyed camp this year. “It was fun!” Nagaraju said, adding “It was awesome to just spend a week with them.”. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Faculty Profile: Lamya Karim skeletal health,” said Dr. Karim. “Bone protein and how proteins can change with disease is not very well-studied, and this is the direction that I’m headed.” The project will investigate the difference in bone quality between diabetics and nondiabetics using samples collected from patients undergoing hip replacement surgery. Dr. Karim will measure key factors of bone quality and measure gene expression of certain proteins to understand if the high sugar levels associated with diabetes affect bone cells.

For patients with type 2 diabetes, the health risks associated with the disease are serious. Blindness, neuropathy, skin infections and cardiovascular disease are common complications. Skeletal fragility has quickly become another major concern. Diabetics have a three-times greater risk of fracture than non-diabetics, including hip fractures, which are associated with increased mortality rates. They also take longer to heal from fractures and often don’t heal properly. Dr. Lamya Karim, Associate Professor of Bioengineering at UMass Dartmouth, has set out to discover why. Dr. Karim joined the College of Engineering in 2016 after earning her Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2011. Her research has its roots in her postdoctoral fellowship work at the Center for Advanced Orthopaedic Studies of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School. While not much is known about the causes of skeletal fragility in diabetics, it’s not due to a loss of bone density. While previous research on bone fragility focused on bone quantity, Dr. Karim is investigating whether diabetes changes bone quality. “In the bone field, everyone talks about bone mass and density. If you have low bone mass, you’re really likely to get osteoporosis and break a bone,” said Dr. Karim. “With diabetes, this rule doesn’t hold true, because

diabetics have plenty of bone mass but still break their bones. As an engineer, it’s really exciting to look into a problem where the rules you’ve learned no longer apply.“ She’s not alone in that excitement: The National Institute of Health awarded her a grant for $616,170 to fund the research. It’s the largest NIH grant ever awarded to UMass Dartmouth and the type of progressive research provides an invaluable learning opportunity. Dr. Karim’s Bone Lab is staffed by several graduate and undergraduate students for whom the experience is immeasurable. “None of this work can be done without the students,” said Dr. Karim, who believes they benefit from hands-on experiments. “They get the chance to mess up, learn from their mistakes and brainstorm ideas to improve parts of the project. When you’re working in the lab, you have to understand that most of your experiments will not go as planned, but as long as you are willing to get creative to find solutions for all the things that go wrong, you will have a fruitful learning experience.” Although the research is in its early stages, the theory is that diabetes may alter bone quality at a molecular level. “Bone is made of mineral and protein. Bone mineral relates to bone density and mass, and researchers know a lot about how bone mineral affects

In addition to the NIH grant, Dr. Karim is also part of a team that received a UMass Dartmouth Multidisciplinary Seed Funding (MSF) award. That study will focus on the mechanical behavior of bone in a simulated diabetic state. “In this project we are simulating diabetes by incubating human bone specimens in a sugar solution, and this gives us the ability to study its effects in a controlled manner,” said Dr. Karim. The hope is that both projects will lead to better diagnostic methods that will help predict and prevent fractures. For that to happen, there’ll need to be better awareness. According to the CDC, of the 30.3 million Americans who have diabetes, one out of four don’t know. And of the 84.1 million who have prediabetes, nine out of ten are unaware. It’s no better for skeletal fragility. “Trying to diagnose and prevent skeletal fractures ahead of time is a big challenge,” said Dr. Karim. That’s because many patients don’t know they have skeletal fragility until they’ve already broken a bone. Meeting that challenge is becoming ever more critical. Given a rapidly aging population that’s susceptible to bone density loss and a sharp increase in type 2 diabetes, skeletal fragility will likely become more widespread in the coming years. “The issue of osteoporosis in our older population combined with the growing incidence of diabetes makes skeletal fragility an even greater public health concern,” said Dr. Karim. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Fall 2017 Newsletter

Faculty Profile: Vijaya Chalivendra Last March, SpaceX made history by relaunching one of its previously used Falcon 9 rockets back into space. While the success marked a major milestone in SpaceX’s quest to reuse rockets, it took four months to clear Falcon 9 for relaunch. To create a costeffective space travel program, that time has to be reduced to 24 hours. The solution could lie in carbon nanotubes and the work of researchers like Dr. Vijaya Chalivendra, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMass Dartmouth. Carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, are tubeshaped carbon nanoparticles, thousands of times smaller than a human hair with a molecular structure that’s 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth of the weight. CNTs are strong, light, flexible and conductive. What truly makes them unique is their extreme aspect ratio. “The high aspect ratio helps generate an excellent conductive network, even when adding a very small amount of CNTs,” said Dr Chalivendra, whose recent research has focused on using embedded CNTs to detect early damage in polymer composites. “When polymers embedded with CNTs are mechanically loaded, the network will change, and the change in network is captured as a change in electrical resistance. When microcracks are formed under various mechanical loads, these cracks can break the network locally, which causes an increase in resistance.”

CNT research could have a profound impact on the development of smart aircraft that utilize comprehensive CNT networks for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive Inspection (NDI). Such aircraft would be capable of detecting microdamage in real-time, before it poses a serious problem.

their composites at early stages to prevent catastrophic failure. As a part of the project, Dr. Chalivendra’s team will have the opportunity to visit the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, and use their acoustic emission, infrared thermography and Raman spectroscopy facilities.

Or, in the case of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, there could be a dramatic reduction in the time needed between launches for evaluation, as well as better in-mission monitoring.

Dr Chalivendra also recently got an award from the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) to acquire a high-speed video camera, which he plans to use in two separate studies. The first will research the angular rotation of football helmets under impact loads, a primary cause of concussion in football players. The highspeed camera, which is capable of capturing up to 10 million frames per second, will also be used to perform a first-of-its-kind study on damage initiation and growth in 3D printed materials under impact loads.

CNTs could also have an impact terrestrially. “There is a growing interest in structural health monitoring of bridges and buildings,” said Dr.Chalivendra. The ability to detect structural vulnerabilities early could help avoid catastrophes like the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse.

“The damage mechanisms and the evolution of 3D printed materials under impact loads have not been studied so far,” said Dr. Chalivendra. “The high-speed camera will give us a clear edge to perform these studies to capture real-time imaging of damage in these materials.”

Based on the success of his work, Dr. Chalivendra received two grants to expand his CNT research. One, from the National Science Foundation, aims to fabricate and understand damage-sensing in natural fiber composites: “There is growing demand for 100% recyclable composites so that we can reduce our carbon footprint,” said Dr. Chalivendra. “In this study, we not only embed CNTs, but also reinforce short carbon fibers between the laminates to generate a three-dimensional conductive network. By reinforcing with short carbon fibers, we reduced the weight percentage of CNTs to 0.025% by weight from our previous studies of 0.1% by weight.”

While his work is of great value to the scientific community, it’s invaluable in the classroom. Dr. Chalivendra has been presenting aspects of his CNT research to freshmen in Introduction to Mechanical Engineering, as well as his Mechanics of Materials (I and II) courses. “Students are excited to know the state-of-the-art research that is going on at UMass Dartmouth,” said Dr. Chalivendra.

“This early detection can lead to either repair or replacement of the component of the structure to avoid catastrophic failure,” said Dr.Chalivendra, who joined the College of Engineering in 2005 after completing his PhD from the University of Rhode Island and was recently promoted to the rank of a full professor.

The other grant is from the Army Research Office, which is interested in detecting damage to

Dr.Chalivendra also takes great pride in sharing his lab with his students. “I truly believe in student learning and better educational experience through research,” he said. But it’s more than just talk. Since joining UMass Dartmouth, he has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications with students, six of which were co-authored with undergraduate students. “I am truly fortunate to have students in my lab and the opportunity to interact with them,” said Dr. Chalivendra. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Department Spotlights Bioengineering Dr. Christopher Brigham lead a team of four bioengineering rising senior students (Anna Von Einem, Alexander Halliwell, Adam Anderson, and Patrick McNeil) to an interactive workshop about engineering design at Coulter College, where the team won a prize for the best-in-class device design. Patrick McNeil and his group won both best-in-class and best overall “sales” pitch for their device concept. Congratulations to Dr. Christopher Brigham for his award from the Target Foundation—($49,966) to create flame retardant fibers by blending nanoparticles with Polymers. Dr. Christopher Brigham, along with Drs. Milana Vasudev, Vijay Chalivendra (Mechanical), Sukalyan Sengupta (Civil) and David Manke (Chemistry) received $240,329 from the National Science Foundation for the acquisition of a Scanning Electron Microscope to be used in their research and training for graduate and undergraduate students. Kudos to Dr. Lamya Karim who was awarded $616,170 by the National Institute of Health to study the long-term impact of diabetes on human bones.

Civil & Environmental Engineering Congratulations to Dr. Walaa Mogawer for the recent award of $783,996 from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to study the properties of Reclaimed Asphalt Pavement (RAP) in Massachusetts. The main source of RAP is the removal of existing asphalt pavement prior to new construction or resurfacing. RAP is highly recyclable when incorporated into new pavements. When larger amounts of RAP are used, the new pavement may experience an increased susceptibility to distresses like cracking; therefore, in addition to studying the properties of RAP, Professor Mogawer will also try to determine how to maximize RAP use in new pavements without sacrificing long-term pavement performance.

Professors Arghavan Louhghalam and Mazdak Tootkaboni will join two colleagues from MIT in co-chairing the highly distinguished 2018 Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) conference of the American Society of Civil Engineers. The conference is expected to attract 800 participants and will include six keynotes by some of the most prominent researchers in engineering mechanics.

Computer & Information Science Congratulations to Dr. Ramprasad Balasubramanian (CIS and Interim Dean) for his grant from the Office of Naval Research ($224, 870) to study the integration of Machine Learning to aiding a team of unmanned undersea vehicles to cooperate autonomously. Drs. Hua Fang (PI) and Honggang Wang (ECE) were awarded a $100,002 grant from the National Science Foundation for their research on “NeTS: EAGER: Exploring 60G HZ based Wireless Body Area Networks for mHealth Applications.” This project explores new statistical modeling and machine learning approaches to characterize the 60 gigahertz (GHz) communication for mobile health (mHealth) applications and builds a strong theoretical foundation for designing and evaluating 60GHz Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) performance. The UMass President’s Creative Economy (CE) Initiatives Fund provided $36,000 in grants to support the proposal “Popularity of Cultural Products in Online Social Media” as a “two—campus” project between UMass Dartmouth and UMass Boston. Dr. Haiping Xu and Richard de Groof (EAS PhD ’18) will be working on novel text mining approaches to investigate factors that drive the popularity of cultural products, particularly music, in a social media environment. Dr. (Julia) Hua Fang, Associate Professor, joined the Department spring, 2017, from UMass Medical School at Worcester. Her areas of expertise include machine learning/

statistical learning in longitudinal studies, missing data analyses and behavioral trajectory pattern recognition. As PI or Co-I, she has sustained continuous funding from federal agencies such as NSF, NIH, PCORI or VA over a decade.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Dr. David Brown was recently awarded a new Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant to assist US Navy scientists and engineers with understanding underwater acoustic sound radiation problems. The complex radiation impedance and directional response depend on device geometry, size, frequency, and baffling. The three-year $400K grant is in collaboration with NUWC and ONR. This achievement bodes well with the College of Engineering growing expertise in Marine Science and Engineering, Vibration and Sound, Applied Acoustics, Transduction and Signal Processing. Congratulations to Dr. Honggang Wang who received the 2016 Scholar of the Year by the UMass Faculty Federation. Dr. Wang was also appointed as Associate Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the IEEE Internet of Things journal in late 2016, which is a top journal in the field. Drs. Yifei Li (PI) and Dayalan Kasilingam (Co-PI) have been awarded a 2017 DoD DURIP grant ($198,590) by AFSOR to create a truly state-of-the-art GHz and Terahertz (THz) photonic testbed. The testbed performs ultra-wideband vector signal demodulation, intensity/phase noise, nonlinear distortion and dynamic range measurement from millimeter wave to THz range (1100GHz). The testbed gives the UMassD RF photonic lab a rare but vital capability to perform innovative research in photonics assisted submillimeter / THz wave radar, communication and sensor systems. Professor Robert Helgeland announced his retirement at the end of August after 45 years of dedicated services to the department. Please join us in thanking this remarkable educator and wishing him well in his retirement.

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Fall 2017 Newsletter

Mechanical Engineering

Physics

Please welcome Dr. Sheikh Ferdous, who joined the Mechanical Engineering Department as a Full-time Lecturer and Facilities manager. Dr. Ferdous comes to us from Binghamton University-SUNY. He will lead the department’s Senior Capstone Project course, in addition to teaching other courses.

Dr. Gaurav Khanna was awarded $59,991 from the National Science Foundation to explore and develop a computational model for binary black hole systems. The field of gravitational wave physics has just had a tremendous breakthrough with the first-ever detection of gravitational wave signals from black hole and neutron star binary systems. These waves were theoretically predicted by Einstein himself exactly a century ago, but had not been observed until just now. Upcoming similar observations will be used to obtain a wealth of information about several exotic and extreme astrophysical systems in nature, and thus open a completely new window onto the Universe! Dr. Khanna’s research will not only help advance our understanding of black holes, but also aid the various gravitational wave observatories like LIGO and LISA to perform more effective signal searches. The grant includes support for a graduate student.

The Mechanical Engineering Design Team advised by Professor and Interim Associate Dean Raymond Laoulache won third place in the Young Engineer Paper Contest at the ASME 2017 International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition (IMECE 2017), Nov. 3-9. Samuel Borgueta, ‘17, presented the team’s capstone project, “Aerodynamic Flutter of Turbine Brush Seals,” at the exposition. Ethos Energy of Chicopee sponsored the project. Congratulations to Dr. Vijaya Chalivendra for his grant from the Army Research Lab ($671,000) to embed carbon nanotubes to detect damage in composite materials that are used in Army vehicles under static and dynamic mechanical loads.”

2017 Sigma Xi undergraduate and graduate research awards included: • Graduate Runner-up Md Fazlay Rabbi (MNE MS ’17)

UMass D in Space

Tingle was drawn to mechanical challenges since he was a boy growing up in Randolph. He attended Blue Hills Regional Technical High School, and during his senior year, he worked in machine design at the Phoenix Electric Corporation in Canton. He saved enough money to pay for his first year at what was then Southeastern Massachusetts University, where he realized that he had to change his major to mechanical engineering to be eligible for the astronaut corps.

Scott Tingle ’87 doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t want to go into space. And on December 17, 2017, at age 52, Tingle will launch into space as the flight engineer aboard a Russian Soyuz MS-07 spacecraft and dock at the International Space Station (ISS). Flying with crew mates Anton Shkaplerov, of Russia, and Norishige Kanai, of Japan, the crew will return to earth in April.

“Coming from a vocational high school, I didn’t have the academic preparation that my classmates did,” said Tingle. He made his goal known to one of the engineering faculty, Ron DiPippo, who explained that before Tingle could be accepted into the program, he had to prove himself by passing advanced courses in math, physics and mechanics. Tingle got A’s in all three classes and said he knew he made it when DiPippo greeted him one day by saying, “Well, hope you like engineering,”“It is not often that a student tells his professor that his goal is to become an astronaut,” Ron DiPippo,

Advisors: Vijaya Chalivendra and Yong Kim High-strain rate response of novel Kevlar/epoxy composites • Undergraduate Runner-up Team Talia D’ Ambruoso (BNG ’17), Edwin Floyd (MNE ’17), Luc-Josue Pierre-Louis (BNG ’18), Tamunonengiyeofori Charles-Ogan (BNG ’17) and Mekides Mazgebu (BNG ’17) Advisor: Lamya Karim Bone Notcher Device 2017 Three-minute Thesis winners included: • Graduate 1st Prize Md Shaad Mahmud, (ELE PhD ’19) Advisor: Professor Honggang Wang

A Novel Approach to Predict and Prevent Sleep Apnea in Premature Infants

• Graduate Second Prize & People’s Choice Jayashree Chakravarty, (BMB PdD ’18) Advisor: Professor Christopher Brigham Bioprocessing sea food waste for medical and industrial applications. n now Chancellor Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering, said. “I’ve only had one in my 37 years of teaching.” DiPippo became one of Tingle’s mentors at UMass Dartmouth, along with engineering professors John Rice and the late John Hansberry. Tingle went on to earn a masters in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, and was commissioned as a naval officer, earning his wings of gold in 1993. Before being selected as an astronaut in 2009, Tingle flew a total of 3,500 hours on 48 different aircraft. He served aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Nimitz, and flew 54 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, as Tingle prepares to realize his dream, he continues to maintain his connections with UMass Dartmouth and the Blue Hills Regional Technical High School and will hopefully propel the dreams of others. He will be doing a downlink from the ISS to UMass Dartmouth in February or March. Follow Scott Tingle at umassd.edu/UMassDinspace. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Faculty Update: Amit Tandon Summer Monsoons are both a blessing and a curse for the Bay of Bengal and the surrounding lands, which include India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The intense seasonal rains deliver relief to parched lands, providing fresh water to reservoirs and farmlands. But they can also be fatal. A light season can bring drought and starvation to millions of people, while a heavy season can unleash floods like those that killed more than 1,200 people in August. In addition to their impact on the Bay of Bengal region, monsoons have a widespread global effect. “Monsoons are very large weather systems. The errors in predicting them adversely impact global weather forecasting,” said Dr. Amit Tandon, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMass Dartmouth. “They affect global weather and have an impact on the Pacific and Atlantic regions, including our neighborhoods, via teleconnections in the atmosphere over short periods of time and the use of oceanic linkages over longer periods of time.” Because of their social and economic impact, the ability to forecast monsoons would be a huge benefit to agricultural and government planning agencies. Currently, meteorologists are not able to reliably forecast more than ten days out; however, Dr. Tandon, who is also an Affiliate Professor at the School of Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), hopes to change that. As part of a joint team of American and Indian researchers, Dr.Tandon studied the influence of the ocean on monsoons in the Bay of Bengal from 2013-17. Starting in November, 2017, Dr. Tandon will return for another six months as part of a Fulbright Scholarship. The key to forecasting monsoons may lie in how the atmosphere interacts with the surface water of the Bay of Bengal, which is part of the Indian Ocean. “Shallow, relatively fresh ocean layers, which form due to river water and the rain, give rise to complex

structures in the upper ocean in the Bay of Bengal. These affect the interaction with the atmosphere in a myriad of ways,” advised Dr. Tandon. Monsoons, like hurricanes, draw energy from the ocean’s surface waters. While the Bay of Bengal is saltwater, intense seasonal rains and runoff from rivers dump large amounts of freshwater into the bay, which settles on the surface. That layer of freshwater responds rapidly to solar heating and supplies warmth and moisture to the atmosphere, which can then increase the power of a monsoon. During the study, nearly 50 scientists, engineers and students on two ships mapped the uppermost layer of the Bay of Bengal. “We mapped the horizontal and vertical structure of the upper ocean in the Bay of Bengal in unprecedented detail for almost the entire international waters of the Bay,” advised Dr. Tandon. The next phase will allow the team to consolidate findings, move ahead on the analysis and write up their past collaborative work. The team also has an additional initiative: MISO-BOB—Monsoon Intra-Seasonal Oscillations (MISO) in the Bay Of Bengal (BOB)—that will run from 2017 to 2021. “MISO have active and break cycles. During active cycles there is vigorous monsoon activity in the atmosphere and the ocean, including intense rain and winds. During break cycles the sky is clear and the ocean recharges with heat,” said Dr. Tandon. These cycles feed each other, with the heavy rains producing the freshwater runoff that intensifies monsoons. “We plan to simultaneously measure the ocean and the atmosphere for MISO and would like to understand how these modes propagate over the ocean,” advised Dr. Tandon. In addition to its scientific value, Dr. Tandon’s research has a strong educational component. An important part of the collaborative effort between the American and Indian

teams was training young scientists. Dr. Tandon has also exposed UMass Dartmouth students to the research. Undergraduate and PhD students in his lab work on datasets from the Bay of Bengal, and he’s introduced the research results in senior and graduate-level classes. Dr. Tandon has also been working with Mechanical Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering seniors, in collaboration with Boston Engineering, to design an inexpensive ocean profiler. “We would like to move the design forward, make two prototypes this year and test it in tanks and local waters,” said Dr. Tandon. Such profilers could add to the knowledge needed for better forecasting, a growing imperative given the number of destructive storms being spawned by warmer ocean temperatures. While it is difficult to tie any one storm to global warming, Dr. Tandon said, “higher ocean temperatures do affect atmospheric convection and, hence, Monsoons. We know that statistically speaking, the active periods of Monsoons have gotten more intense and the break periods have gotten longer on average.” The result is a higher risk of catastrophic drought and flooding. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

Fall 2017 Newsletter

Capstone Engineered by Design

For years, the engineering curricula at UMass Dartmouth has included various engineering design courses, generally culminating with a senior project or Capstone experience. Our engineering students have typically wrestled with design challenges posed by research faculty. Two significant changes in the structure of these courses have been implemented. First, the projects are now industry sponsored engineering challenges from outside clients. Most often, the projects involve product design, machinery design, such as a tool or fixture for factory use, or process design and optimization. As an added benefit, project sponsors have a chance to observe students’ skills firsthand and may offer them professional employment after graduation. Second, capstone course scheduling is now identical throughout the College of Engineering. Seniors from different disciplines can meet and work together efficiently, because the senior project courses for all departments are offered at the same time. Just as in industry, our students are now able to gain experience working outside their normal disciplines, alongside colleagues who have different knowledge and skillsets. Student teams with mechanical, electrical, computer and bioengineering students work sideby-side to solve an engineering problem. Just this year, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department aligned its schedule to permit this collaboration, and Computer Science and Physics students are joining these multidisciplinary teams.

Does it work? Yes! Our students learn as much about engineering design as they do about leadership, teamwork and communication. Three recent examples: • Last year, Allard Engineering posed a complex wind turbine project. The design task was divided among three teams: one to undertake the aerodynamic study and design; a second team to engage in the research, study, and design of a unique mechanical support and bearing assembly; and a third team to grapple with generating electrical power from a slow-turning rotor. The three teams were charged with collaborating to fit the different pieces together—just as they will find when they encounter significant design projects in their professional careers. • Woundchek Laboratories, a small startup in the University’s Fall River Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, extended a successful project from last year through the summer by hiring one of the team members. Woundchek’s assignment this year includes Mechanical, Bioengineering, and Computer Science teams in a novel product design challenge. Students are working on chemistry, photonics, physics, instrumentation,

electronics, mechanical design, manufacturing, image capture and analysis, and a healthy dose of laboratory experimentation. This project is a genuine multidisciplinary challenge! • A faithful and long-time project sponsor, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), has challenged teams for the last five years with genuine problems related to operations and performance of various subway lines. Projects have included design of an improved wheelchair ramp, protection from snow and ice that damaged a critical valve on a subway car undercarriage, improving the performance of electric motor balancing machines, filtering welding smoke and fumes from the workplace, designing and fabricating a specialized mechanical system for subway car suspensions, devising a way to efficiently clean air conditioning condensers, and others. These projects were genuine needs that, once solved by our engineering students, helped improve operational efficiency of the MBTA. At least one of the students joined the MBTA as an intern before graduation. She’s found a lucrative engineering career in the heavy rail industry. The College of Engineering’s successful Capstone program shows time and again that our skilled students can use their classroom education and lab experiences to solve genuine, real-world engineering problems. We designed it that way. n

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering

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Fall 2017 Newsletter

Ask Tianna Tianna Edwards ’18 advises anyone seeking an internship to jump in, ask questions, and try it. “You have no idea what you might love,” she says. “The internship doesn’t have to be directly related to what you do.” That curiosity is what led Tianna to UMass Dartmouth, pursuing a Bioengineering/Pre-Med major with a minor in Biochemistry, Leadership, and Civic Engagement. Under the mentorship and guidance of Dr. Roger S. Thrall at UConn Health Center Immunology Department, Tianna was able to train in lab animal testing and safety, learning how to perform surgery on laboratory mice. “This was the first real experience I had with research, and I loved it. I was in charge of compiling my data into something meaningful.” She credits this singular experience with solidifying her career goals, but also knows her internships gave her an important sense

of professional direction. “Internships provide a network that allows you to explore different fields of study. [My internships] introduced me to amazing people who give great suggestions of what I should apply for next.” Networking was key to Tianna landing a second research placement at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Tianna is the latest recipient of the Class of 2014 Dream Scholarship, which is awarded annually to a current UMass Dartmouth student. Founded by the class of 2014 leadership when they were seniors, this fund seeks to provide financial assistance to students, allowing them to pursue opportunities that may not otherwise be an option.

As for what’s next? Tianna beams, “My plan following graduation is to attend medical school.” Until then, Tianna will continue to stay involved with campus commitments, like her role as senator for the College of Engineering on the Student Government Association. Her habit of dreaming big has really just begun. n To support students, engineer their future with a gift to the College of Engineering; please visit www.umassd.edu/give or call (508) 999-8200.

coe@umassd.edu • College of Engineering • www.umassd.edu/engineering