Engineeringwv Fall 2017 Magazine and Annual Report by WVU Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

AN UNWAVERING DEDICATION TO COMMUNITY

Right on target

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For the fifth-straight year, the WVU rifle team capped its undefeated regular-season record of 12-0 with a national championship. And, as has often been the case, engineering majors made up half of the team.

Thrasher

Babic

A six-time All-American, Springfield, Virginia, native Ginny Thrasher was the 2017 College Rifle Coaches Association and the Great America Rifle Conference Shooter of the Year, as well as a finalist for the 87th AAU James E. Sullivan Award. She also placed second in smallbore at the 2017 NCAA Rifle Championships and won the air rifle title at the GARC Championships. In 2016, she claimed Gold in the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 10m air rifle at the Rio Summer Olympics and finished third in the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 10m air rifle at the ISSF World Cup Final for Rifle/Pistol. A biomedical engineering major, Thrasher was also named to the College Sports Information Directors of America Academic All-District Team.

First-year shooter Milica Babic, a Belgrade, Serbia, native, is the reigning NCAA air rifle champion. She capped her rookie season with three All-America honors, as well as the first-ever CRCA Freshman of the Year and GARC Outstanding Rookie awards.

ELLIS

Barker Winfield native Noah Barker sat out the 2016-2017 season. Barker, a 2015 Junior Olympics smallbore qualifier and three-time West Virginia NRA smallbore three positions state champion, is expected to compete for the first time during the 2017-2018 season.

Veteran shooter Jean-Pierre Lucas, a member of the program for the past five years, was named to the 2017 Academic All-Big 12 At-Large Second Team, the NRA All-America Smallbore First Team, the CRCA AllAmerica Second Team and received an NRA All-America Honorable Mention in air rifle. Additionally, Lucas, from Speers, Pennsylvania, earned All-GARC Smallbore and Combined Score First Team honors. He also was named to the All-GARC Air Rifle Second Team.

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Lucas

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VOLUME 13 NO. 2

DEAN Eugene V. Cilento gene.cilento@mail.wvu.edu / 304.293.4157 DIRECTOR Marketing and Communications Mary C. Dillon mary.dillon@mail.wvu.edu DESIGN COORDINATOR Marketing and Communications J. Paige Nesbit CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Brittany Furbee / Marissa Sura / Madison Thompson PHOTOGRAPHY M.G. Ellis / Brittany Furbee / J. Paige Nesbit / Brian Persinger / Jennifer Shephard ADDRESS West Virginia University / Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources / PO Box 6070 / Morgantown, WV 26506-6070 statler.wvu.edu CHANGE OF ADDRESS WVU Foundation / PO Box 1650 Morgantown, WV 26504-1650 Fax: 304.284.4001 / e-mail: info@wvuf.org mountaineerconnection.com

MISSION STATEMENT

The Statler College mission is to prepare students for success in their professional careers; to contribute to the advancement of society through learning, discovery, extension and service; and to stimulate economic wellbeing in West Virginia and the world through technical innovation, knowledge creation and educational excellence. Engineering West Virginia is published twice each year, in spring and fall, for the alumni, friends and other supporters of the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. Copyright ©2017 by the WVU Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. Brief excerpts of articles in this publication may be reprinted without a request for permission if Engineering West Virginia is acknowledged in print as the source. Contact the director for permission to reprint entire articles.

FURBEE

The WVU Board of Governors is the governing body of WVU. The Higher Education Policy Commission in West Virginia is responsible for developing, establishing and overseeing the implementation of a public policy agenda for the state’s four-year colleges and universities. WVU is an EEO/Affirmative Action employer — Minority/ Female/Disability/Veteran.

COVER STORY

DEPARTMENTS

Generation We:

Dean’s Message

An Unwavering Dedication to Community

Research and Development

Engineering 360˚

In the Spotlight

Year in Review

Alumni Academies

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CONTENTS

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Deanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Message

ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Usually my letters to you include highlights of all the great things our students, faculty and staff in the Statler College are doing to improve engineering research and education on a number of fronts. This time is no different, but the focus of their efforts is. As many of you know, the state of West Virginia is facing a continuing budget crisis. We have been through lean years before, and even when discussions question the overall return on investment to the state in regards to funding its colleges and universities, we have ready answers that go beyond the great value an engineering education provides to students and the nation.

... Engineering Without Borders members made two visits—including one over spring break— to the tiny mining community of Prenter in an attempt to bring potable water to its citizens; something they have been without for more than 10 years. They have made progress on this complex project, which uses their engineering skills as well as the expertise of WVU’s Law School Clinics, and are committed to seeing this project through to completion. ... Two engineering students, Madison Thompson and Josh Watson, partnered with Roark Sizemore from the Eberly College to create Pantry Plus More, a local nonprofit in Monongalia County that brings food and supplies to students and families in need. They have now partnered with Mountaineer Food Bank and together they are donating close to 20,000 pounds of food and goods each month. ... Sigma Phi Delta, the professional engineering fraternity, spends 70 percent of its volunteer time on philanthropic efforts in the community. They spent most of the spring at Bartlett House, a homeless shelter in Morgantown. The organization’s Triage Shelter houses up to 28 individuals each night, and the fraternity brothers did everything from sweeping and mopping floors to loading washers and dryers and folding the laundry so that each resident received clean bedding for the evening. ... The WVU section of the Society of Women Engineers not only provides quality programming at College events like Girl Scouts Day and Eighth Grade Day, they also find time to give back to some of their furry friends. In addition to volunteering at Animal Friends of North Central West Virginia, the members spent time the week before finals volunteering at On Eagles’ Wings, a therapeutic horsemanship center in Fairmont. From mucking stalls to cleaning windows, the volunteers were praised by the executive director of the center as being their “best and most consistent volunteers.” ... Most people realize ham radios are helpful in case of emergency. But most people don’t know the extent of services WVU’s Amateur Radio Club provides to Monongalia County. In addition to transmitting to emergency personnel at events like Morgantown’s annual Christmas Parade, they have provided local emergency services to organizations such as the American Red Cross and the National Guard during power outages, snowstorms and even last year’s floods in southern West Virginia. These are just a few of the countless examples of how our students make a difference. In academic year 2015-2016, they contributed nearly 7,500 hours of volunteer time to projects across the University while remaining committed to their studies. This sounds like a pretty good return on investment that needs to continue to be supported by tax dollars for the advancement, economic development and prosperity of the state.

Eugene V. Cilento, Glen H. Hiner Dean and Professor

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GENE CILENTO

Student engagement and interest in making a difference in the community are at an all-time high. This issue of EWV Magazine documents some of the ways in which our students provide technical expertise and social support to communities all over the state. I’m sure you will agree that their enthusiasm and drive are unbeatable. In this issue, you will read about how …

Research and Development

PROFESSOR’S PATENTED SYSTEM

COULD

SAVE LIVES

AND MAKE CITIES MORE RESILIENT AFTER NATURAL DISASTERS WRITTEN BY MARISSA SURA PHOTOGRAPHS BY M.G. ELLIS & J. PAIGE NESBIT

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WVU Professor Hota GangaRao and Praveen Majjigapu, a PhD student in civil engineering, have developed a system that will increase the strength and endurance of structures in earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other large blasts, helping communities prevent catastrophe. The system is also beneficial for repairing historic or aging structures.

Fear of the “Big One,” a magnitude 8.0 or greater earthquake, has been fodder for cinema and amusement park rides for decades, but the reality could be devastating for communities that are unprepared for that rare rupture or even weaker, but more common, lower-magnitude tremors.

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Research and Development The three-piece system consisting of filler modules—wedge-like parts made to certain specifications—reinforcing dowels and composite materials allows buildings and bridges to resist heavier loads, and provides a significant amount of shock absorption as well as moisture and fire resistance. “With this system, even if a joint cracks under excessive loads it won’t immediately collapse,” said GangaRao, who is the Maurice A. and Joann Wadsworth Distinguished Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and director of the Statler College’s Constructed Facilities Center. “By minimizing failures of structures, we can increase the safety and security of communities, prevent costly damage and save lives.” Additionally, outfitting a building with the system is much more cost-effective and requires less time than traditional methods of retrofitting and yields better results.

“There is a significant need for this type of repair and retrofit around the world.” —Praveen Majjigapu

“Rehabilitation of old buildings is expensive and labor intensive,” said GangaRao, who is also the director of the Center for Integration of Composites into Infrastructure. “An affordable solution will allow more buildings to be strengthened.”

THE COMPLEXITY OF SIMPLICITY At first glance, a wedge nestled into a joint seems like an easy solution— almost too easy. “The beauty of the system is its simplicity,” GangaRao said.

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But he is quick to point out that there is a substantial scientific method behind the patented system’s design.

In a cavernous lab, GangaRao works with Majjigapu and other team members to fabricate joints that can be tested under extremely heavy loads.

One test consists of two concrete members, a column and a cantilever, which are connected to form a sideways “T.” Then wedges are bonded to the two 90-degree angles on either side of the joint. The system can work with structures made of various materials, such as concrete, timber and composites. The wedges can also be made of different advanced materials depending on their application. Aside from material, one of the most important characteristics of the wedge is its shape, which is meant to eliminate high-stress zones in the joint and depends on factors such as load, material and the configuration of the joint. “In an optimal system, the wedge will have some sort of curve,” GangaRao said. “But it requires a lot of mathematical computation behind the scenes.” After the wedges are bonded to the joint, team members install steel bars through the wedges and into the concrete to reinforce and lock the pieces into place. Next the team cuts multiple sheets of composite material—fabric made of carbon or glass fibers bonded with a polymer resin—into a series of puzzle pieces that are wrapped around the concrete, adhered with additional resin and left to cure. Composite materials are noncorrosive, more durable and cheaper to install than more traditional methods, making them ideal for not only the construction of new structures, but also for the repair of aging structures. Once the composite has hardened, the totality of dissimilar materials is bonded together and work as a single unit, stronger and more durable.

TESTING FOR FAILURE GangaRao’s lab is full of impressive structures, and he hopes all of them will fail.

To find this out, Majjigapu attaches a series of gauges to the wrapped structure. Some gauges measure strain, which is the amount of deformation that occurs under load. Some gauges measure tension, which is how much the concrete becomes stretched or elongated. The basic idea is that concrete is not very good at holding tension, so when there is a lot of it the structure will not be as strong. Think of a diving board, which is only supported on one end. When you stand on the edge over the water the board bends under your weight. If there is too much weight, the board or the joint—or both— could break. Without the three-part system, GangaRao’s lab tests have shown failure under a 7-ton load. With the system, the team has been able to apply five to seven times that amount—nearly 50 tons—before failure.

THE NEED FOR SUPPORT Engineers and scientists have developed ways to manage the stress put on aging buildings and bridges as well as those in seismic areas. Over the years, building regulations have tightened as earthquakeand hurricane-prone cities try to minimize fatalities, property damage and insurance claims. Despite those efforts there are still thousands of structures that lack the appropriate levels of protection necessary to withstand blast-level loads. “There is a significant need for this type of repair and retrofit around the world,” Majjigapu said.

For example, in 2010 a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti resulted in the deaths of 100,000 people, many of whom could not escape buildings before they collapsed. Countries such as India and Nepal are in seismic zones with old buildings, monuments and transportation infrastructure that may not withstand a high-magnitude quake. In the United States, The Los Angeles Times recently reported that Santa Monica is hoping to pass the “nation’s most extensive earthquake retrofit plan” to nearly 2,000 vulnerable buildings. In addition, the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card gave the nation’s roads and bridges a D+ as the physical condition and performance of decades-old structures continues to deteriorate.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE GangaRao will continue lab testing, but plans to begin field testing on towers, lattice structures and hydrostructures to record repeated performance of the retrofit in real-world applications. Ultimately, he knows that the success of the system will rely on cooperation with industry, practicing engineers, construction companies, agencies, departments of transportation, cities, states and countries. His goal is to provide maximum strength and endurance at very low cost, while also making it quick and easy to outfit buildings and bridges with a new system. “We have to show people what we are doing at WVU, so they can see the broad range of applications that are possible in addition to the savings in time and cost,” GangaRao said.

“By minimizing failures of structures, we can increase the safety and security of communities, prevent costly damage and save lives.” —Hota GangaRao

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“We are testing this system to the point of failure,” he said. “Right now, we know how a column behaves under stress. We know how a cantilever behaves under stress. But we know little about what happens at the intersection of the two.”

Research and Development

Lima Earns Prestigious

NSF CAREER Award WRITTEN BY MARY C. DILLON

FERNANDO LIMA

Fernando Lima, assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, has earned a prestigious CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for his work to improve modular systems for energy applications. The award comes with $500,000 in funding over a five-year period. The northeast and mid-Atlantic regions are home to an abundance of shale gas, which has the potential to be used as a low-cost feedstock for producing energy and chemicals. However much of it is “stranded”; the geographic terrain, especially in West Virginia, makes it difficult to build pipelines to extract the resource to process it in a centralized location. Modular systems, which are built from small pieces of equipment that can be easily transported to these sites, can eliminate the need for expensive pipelines. According to Lima, there are several economic and technological challenges associated with modular systems that have prevented their development. “One of the economic challenges is that the systems are small, thus challenging the concept of economies of scale,” Lima said. “Due to their size, they are coupled and highly integrated, which can result in mathematical models that are large in scale and complex and nonlinear in nature.”

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Lima and the members of his research team, which include WVU students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, will analyze computational approaches that are expected to provide guidelines for the design of modular systems to accelerate their development and use.

“This research will expose students to emerging technologies and state-ofthe-art process systems engineering tools,” Lima said. “We will use process optimization and computational geometry tools to optimize and intensify designs for the modular systems so that they have maximized efficiency, reduced cost and minimized environmental impact. Additionally, statistical and stochastic control tools will be explored to account for process variables related to gas composition and energy cost.” The investigated emerging technologies, Lima added, include membrane reactor processes for the direct methane aromatization conversion to hydrogen and benzene as well as natural gas combined cycle processes for power generation.

The project will use the process simulator at WVU’s Advanced Virtual Energy Simulation Training and Research, or AVESTAR, Center as a platform for the integration of research and education. Lima plans to host events for high school students to expose them to clean energy technologies through the use of the three-dimensional gaming environment of AVESTAR. “In addition to developing teaching skills for the WVU students, these events will hopefully motivate high school students to join STEM fields, thereby providing society a new workforce with the skills needed to succeed in a clean energy environment future,” Lima said. “This research is also closely aligned with current efforts by WVU’s Center for Innovation in Gas Research and Utilization as well as its Energy Institute.” “This award from NSF recognizes Dr. Lima’s creativity in finding solutions to major societal problems,” said Rakesh Gupta, the George and Carolyn Berry Professor and chairperson of the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. “It not only allows him to couple and integrate reactions and transport processes in modular units, it also allows him to indulge in his passion of integrating research with teaching.” Lima earned his doctorate in chemical engineering from Tufts University in 2007 and his bachelor’s degree in the discipline from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 2003. The NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, program supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations. This is the seventh straight year that a member of the Statler College faculty has been selected to receive this honor. “To have yet another member of our faculty selected for this prestigious award is testament to the high quality of faculty we are recruiting to the Statler College,” said Gene Cilento, Glen H. Hiner Dean of the Statler College. “Finding ways to develop the region’s shale gas reserves is crucial to the economic future of our state and nation. Dr. Lima is doing cutting-edge research in this area and he readily shares his knowledge with the students he mentors.”

WVU AWARDED $1.25 MILLION FROM ARPA-E FOR TRANSFORMATIONAL ENERGY TECHNOLOGY The United States Department of Energy has marked an engineering research project at WVU as a high-potential opportunity to make a demonstrable impact on the country’s energy portfolio and to do it quickly. The University has received $1.25 million from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, known as ARPA-E. The award will be used to develop technologies for converting electrical energy from renewable resources into energy-dense carbon-neutral liquid fuels—that is, fuels that do not increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. VICTOR FRAGOSO

WVU received the award from ARPA-E’s Renewable Energy to Fuels through Utilization of Energy-Dense Liquids, or REFUEL, program. John Hu, Statler Chair in the Statler College, and Hanjing Tian, assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, will develop cutting-edge technology to synthesize ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen using microwave plasma catalysis.

FRAGOSO TO STUDY COMPUTER VISIONRELATED IMAGE RECOGNITION

“The innovative ammonia synthesis technology developed in this project enables longterm energy storage and long-distance renewable energy delivery from remote, isolated and stranded locations,” Hu said.

PERSINGER

Self-driving cars use images from onboard cameras to navigate through cities. But what happens when the car’s computer can’t recognize the same image in two different pictures? Victor Fragoso, an assistant professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, said a computer’s inability to identify the same object in two different pictures is a fundamental problem in the field of computer vision.

MorphoTrak, a key provider of biometric services to law enforcement and other agencies, has donated access to MorphoCloud, a cloud-based collection of services, to WVU to support its highly regarded research and education programs in biometrics and forensics. MorphoTrak, a subsidiary of Safran Identity and Security, has collaborated with the WVU biometrics program for several years, supporting a number of researchers’ projects; this opportunity builds on that relationship.

The current version of MorphoCloud includes services for fingerprint and palmprint search and verification, as well as face recognition. In the near future, the cloud services available to WVU will be expanded to include iris recognition and video analytics. As part of the donation, MorphoTrak will provide technology training and support to WVU to operate the multi-biometric identification capability of MorphoCloud.

Fragoso’s research, which is being funded by a two-year grant from the National Science Foundation, will measure the confidence the computer has when it determines that two objects with different viewpoints are present in one same scene.

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MORPHOTRAK DONATES $1.5 MILLION IN CLOUD TECHNOLOGY FOR BIOMETRIC RESEARCH

“Humans have the ability to recognize the same object in different images, which allows them to understand and navigate through the three-dimensional structure of the world. This same task, however, does not come so easily to computers,” Fragoso said. “Computers need to understand a scene through an image, which is represented as a squared grid of numbers.”

Cover Story

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AN UNWAVERING DEDICATION TO COMMUNITY

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”

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—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cover Story

WHEN THE CALL FOR HELP COMES,

We Are Ready WRITTEN BY MADISON THOMPSON

It doesn’t take much searching to find an article on how my generation is self-centered, needs immediate gratification and has a knack for believing we are better than we probably are. Statistics show that we’ll enter the workforce with the assumption that we are ready to take on the biggest projects, fully believing we know as much as the individual who has been there for 25 years. These numbers show that we lack social skills, depend on the thoughts of others for solutions and spend entirely too much time on the internet. Take one look at these articles and you’ll quickly think we need to be put down a few notches. Maybe some of us do, but I think a lot of these articles are missing a significant point. Growing up in West Virginia, you learn that no matter where you are in the state, everyone is proud to be a West Virginian and will help their neighbor at the drop of a hat. People who come here take notice of this and often take on this mentality themselves. The University does a lot of great things, but what I love most is how it embodies the spirit of this state. The campus culture cultivates the desire to help those around us, both far and near. The flooding disaster in the summer

and community members. They spent hours tirelessly working to sort and send supplies, giving up days and sometimes weeks of their summer vacation. A number of student organizations, including several from the Statler College, went to the affected areas to help with cleanup. It is examples like this that make me proud to be a Mountaineer; when the call for help comes, we are ready to fight back. It doesn’t take a natural disaster for our Mountaineer community to come together to help. Every day on campus, we have student organizations helping to promote STEM to underrepresented groups, creating water filtration systems to be placed around the world and taking time to recruit the next generation of Mountaineers who visit our campus. This past year alone, student organizations in the Statler College contributed nearly 7,500 hours of volunteer time to projects ranging from University visitation days to the Statler College’s new Career Closet. Through my time at WVU I have been able to volunteer at many different events through the Society of Women Engineers and Engineers Without Borders. Both organizations do amazing work on and off campus to promote STEM through hands-on activities and service projects and trips. The national chapters of these

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This past year alone, student organizations in the Statler College contributed nearly 7,500 hours of volunteer time to projects ranging from University visitation days to the Statler College’s new Career Closet.

of 2016 that took place in southern West Virginia, hitting whole communities with immense destruction, is just one example. Within hours of the flooding, we had students of all majors, alumni and faculty coming together to help in the cleanup efforts. If you were in Morgantown at the time, you quickly noticed that there was no bottled water or bleach to be found anywhere on store shelves. All of it had been bought and sent to the southern counties. A central distribution center was created in Stansbury Hall, run by volunteers comprised of faculty, students, alumni

organizations recognize these efforts with awards for academic success and their commitment to community service. When I look at my friends and colleagues in the Statler College and across WVU, it’s hard to imagine that I am looking at a generation of self-absorbed, egotistical people. Time and time again, we prove that we are not what society labels us as; we are using our time here to further ourselves and those around us.

NESBIT

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Madison Thompson is a civil engineering major from Morgantown. She is a member of the WVU section of the Society of Women Engineers, the WVU chapter of Engineers Without Borders and is a founding member of Pantry Plus More.

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Cover Story

Generation We: AN UNWAVERING DEDICATION TO COMMUNITY WRITTEN BY BRITTANY FURBEE, EDITED BY MARY C. DILLON PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRITTANY FURBEE & J. PAIGE NESBIT

When chemicals seeped into the Elk River in Charleston in January 2014, nearly 300,000 residents within nine counties were without access to potable water. Soon thereafter the people of Flint, Michigan, began dealing with their own water crisis when, due to insufficient water treatment, more than 100,000 residents were potentially exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water. Meanwhile, 35 miles away from the West Virginia state capitol, residents in the once-booming coal community of Prenter have been living without a maintained water supply for more than 10 years. “When the water would come out of the faucet it always had white sulfur in it for as long as I can remember,” said Susan Coleman, a 70-year resident of Prenter. “The water would look milky, but you could let it sit for a few minutes and the cloudiness

“... we had hope that this nightmare would be over, but the water never came.” —Susan Coleman

Patriot Coal established the water system in Prenter to serve their mining complex as well as the residents within the community. When the company left the area and eventually filed for bankruptcy, the water quality quickly deteriorated. It is now entirely untreated and has not met disinfection requirements for bacteria and virus removal for several years and is heavily laden with hydrogen sulfide, rendering it unsafe for consumption. Residents have no choice but to use it for showering, washing clothes and dishes and occasionally for cooking, despite the fact it forms a white film over everything it touches.

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would fizzle out. It seemed like no big deal at the time. Water came out of the faucet so we drank it. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that anyone knew there was anything wrong with the water.”

Cover Story After years of unanswered pleas to the coal company, senators and the county commission, help finally came to Prenter in the form of a group of engineering students from WVU.

BILLIE BENDER

“When the mines closed, and there was no one left to take care of things or treat the water, it really exposed how bad it actually was,” said Billie Bender, a 39-year resident of the now-tiny Boone County community. “Years ago, chemicals from the mine would run out into the creeks and into the groundwater near the tank. But people didn’t think about the consequences back then. “If you live in Prenter, you know that when you go to the store you just go ahead and get as much water as you can,” said Bender, who noted the closest grocery store is 30 miles away. “I buy water all the time in bottles and by the gallon because you just never know when you’ll have running water.” Years of petitioning to have city water lines from Charleston extended into their community have fallen on deaf ears due to budgetary restraints within the county. “Just two miles down the road, people have treated water running into their homes,” said Coleman, who goes down to the creek

“The mission of Engineers Without Borders is to provide support to communities to ensure that their basic human needs are being met,” said Morgan King, a civil and environmental engineering major from Charleston. “We had already completed several water improvement projects internationally so when we learned that there was a community that so desperately needed help right here in our state we knew we had to help them.” During this year’s spring break, the students traveled to Prenter to begin the daunting task of restoring the water system. An initial assessment found that much of the equipment in the control room of the well house would need to be repaired or replaced and a long-term power source to run the equipment would need to be established. Before those improvements could be made, extensive work would first need to be completed on the abandoned water storage and contact tanks if they hoped to ever use them as a viable location to store clean water for the community once the system was restored. To actually repair the tanks students had to remove paint, treat rust spots and power wash the surface, which was a significant challenge without a water supply. “Reconditioning the tanks was incredibly difficult,” said Courtney Gelety, a physics major from Harpers Ferry. “Our original plan was to use the water inside the tanks to power wash the outside but we ended up having to rig a system to get clean water that required carrying buckets from the

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“... painting a Flying WV symbol on the reconditioned contact tank that residents drive by is a daily reminder to them that people are listening.” —Courtney Gelety

on a daily basis to haul water to her house just to be able to flush her toilet. “Years ago, we had the understanding that the lines were going to come … we had hope that this nightmare would be over, but the water never came. We’ve already gone three weeks without running water this year. “No one should have to live like this, but no one seems to care that the people here are struggling.”

bottom of a hill to the top where the tank was located. This was tiresome and grueling, but we ended up completing the task at hand. “The main goal of the trip was to assess the situation and do some reconditioning work, but I think the most important part of us going there was providing the community with hope,” Gelety added. “Just going there and painting a Flying WV symbol on the reconditioned contact tank that residents drive by is a daily reminder to them that people are listening.”

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Cover Story

“… HOPE FOR THOSE FAMILIES WHO OFTEN FEEL HOPELESS.” Home to WVU, Monongalia County had a cost of living that was 3.7 percent higher than the national average in 2015. It also had a poverty rate of 20.3 percent. “In Monongalia County, one-in-four children live in poverty without having basic essentials such as food, clothes and hygiene products,”said Roark Sizemore, a political science major from Morgantown. “I thought a school pantry program would be a perfect fit to help combat this problem.”

While students were encouraged to visit the pantry themselves to receive items, teachers also sent lists of available items to parents so they could determine what items were needed at home. “About 60 of our nearly 340 students use the pantry, and we send food home based on family size so there is enough for siblings and parents as well,” said Mehle. “When a child is hungry or malnourished their brain simply does not work at its fullest potential, which becomes an obstacle for learning and functioning. I know that participation in

ELLIS

“In Monongalia County, one-in-four children live in poverty without having basic essentials such as food, clothes and hygiene products ... .” —Roark Sizemore What started out as a high school class project for Sizemore quickly became a passion for him and two engineering students: civil engineering majors and Morgantown natives Madison Thompson and Josh Watson. The trio quickly realized that substantial funding was needed if they had any hope of getting the program up and running. They quickly got to work and were able to rally their fellow Student Government Association members at WVU into donating $3,000 to be used toward the launch of Pantry Plus More.

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“I knew we were going to be able to bring together some funds, but I was very surprised when we ended up totaling $3,000,” said Watson. “Each governor in SGA has a $500 annual budget to use for projects and events and I am so thankful that six of us, including myself and Madison, decided to utilize our funding for this cause.”

the Pantry Plus More program provides our students with the energy and nutrition they need in order to be their best possible selves each and every day.” After seeing the demand in the pilot schools, Pantry Plus More applied for nonprofit status from the IRS and spent the next year expanding its services to offer pantries at five local schools, all of which were fully funded by donations. “One day after our school pantry opened I had a student go home and excitedly ask her guardian if they had gotten a new refrigerator,” said Sharon Petitte, principal of Ridgedale Elementary School. “I had dropped off groceries from the pantry at their home and for the first time in a long time their refrigerator was filled with healthy food. Most kiddos are excited about toys and bikes but this child was excited to just have a full refrigerator.”

With funding in hand the group was ready to open their first in-school pantry. After a review of free and reduced lunch statistics in the county, they determined that Mason Dixon Elementary and South Middle would be the pilot schools for 2016.

“The overall impression of Morgantown is that since the University is here, there is not a significant population that needs help,” said Sizemore. “However, we were having to deliver additional items to schools on a weekly basis, which showed us that there were significantly more families in need in our community than we initially anticipated.”

“I was thrilled when I learned that our school would be getting the first pantry because 50 percent of our students receive free or reduced meals, meaning their families are living below the poverty line,” said Jesse Mehle, a counselor at Mason Dixon Elementary. “When money is tight, families are forced to make sacrifices to make ends meet, and nutritious food is often one of them.”

In order to expand their reach, the WVU students sought a partnership with the Mountaineer Food Bank, an organization located in Gassaway that provides counties in West Virginia with more than 3.5 million items of food and household items per year.

“Through our in-school pantries we were able to demonstrate to the Mountaineer Food Bank that there is a significant number of families in our county that would benefit from their services,” said Thompson. “It was extremely heartwarming when we found out that they wanted to partner with us and come help our community.” The two organizations worked together to bring the first community pantry event to the county on January 26, 2017. Volunteers from Pantry Plus More were able to serve more than 15,000 pounds of produce and 3,000 pounds of meat donated by MFB to 279 families. “Although we were helping students get supplies that they needed through the in-school pantries, as a small and new organization we could only do so much,” said Thompson. “When we had almost 300 families show up to the first event it proved that there is an abundance of families in need here.” MFB and Pantry Plus More now host a regular mobile pantry event in the county where they donate close to 20,000 pounds of food and goods each month. “It is heartwarming to know that the students are so involved in establishing and continuing this program,” said Petitte. “Young adults who have the maturity to know and understand that providing for others and giving back to the community is a rewarding experience that should be recognized and applauded. This type of volunteerism provides hope for those families who often feel hopeless. These young men and women are the true winners in the game of life, and we are truly blessed to benefit from their kind deeds.”

According to Sizemore, through their partnership with MFB, Pantry Plus More can purchase prepackaged food boxes that contain a week’s worth of food for just $11. The boxes can be delivered to participating schools and sent home with children over holiday breaks to ensure that they are successfully fed year round.

“This type of volunteerism provides hope for those families who often feel hopeless.” —Sharon Petitte

Sizemore’s presentation impressed the judges and landed Pantry Plus More first place in the competition along with a check for $1,750. “The Idea Challenge was so much more than a competition for us,” said Sizemore. “When we purchase food through the MFB $1 equals $10. Winning the competition means we now have $17,500 to use toward feeding hungry children in Monongalia County.”

JOSH WATSON & MADISON THOMPSON

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In March their efforts were recognized when Sizemore presented the idea behind Pantry Plus More to judges at the March Ideas Challenge, sponsored by the WVU LaunchLab. He also floated a new idea: the holiday break box program.

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“When we learned that they hadn’t received a single volunteer in more than a month, we decided to send members to the shelter every week to help.” —Zachary Peek

“... COMMUNITIES THRIVE WHEN THE PEOPLE WITHIN THEM HELP EACH OTHER …”

When one of the brothers presented the fraternity with an opportunity to volunteer at Bartlett House, a homeless shelter in Morgantown, Peek quickly signed them up. For Peek, the opportunity was personal. “I didn’t fully understand the significance of helping out others in my community until my uncle lost his job,” he explained. “It caused him to lose his house, which led to him being homeless, living in the back of a truck that had no gas in it for about six months. A local church started helping him out by paying him to clean and even giving him a place to stay. When that happened it really clicked for me that we should be helping people in the community because he was doing alright for himself then one day everything changed.” “In 2016, 445 individuals utilized the services offered by the organization,” said Bartlett House Assistant Director Ryan Boyd. “Homelessness is a problem that can affect any one of us. Just because you believe your life is stable and secure today does not mean that this will remain the case in the future. The services that we provide help those in our community who are experiencing homelessness get back on their feet.” SPD members began volunteering in March with the organization’s Triage Shelter in downtown Morgantown, which provides temporary housing support for homeless people in the area and can house up to 28 individuals per night. When they arrived, they passed through a crowded room of

families waiting for entry into the bunks, even though the doors wouldn’t open for another three hours, and headed upstairs to prepare the rooms for the night. “The first time I walked into the sleeping quarters I thought ‘wow they really need our help,’” said Luke Styer, a chemical engineering major from Olley, Pennsylvania. “There were giant piles of laundry that needed to be done and so many bedrooms that need to be cleaned. There definitely was no time to waste.” The brothers quickly started a few loads of laundry in the industrial washers before dividing into groups for sweeping and mopping. Every inch of the floors in the common room, hallway and bedrooms was swept to collect debris and trash from the night before. Once the floors were spotless and the laundry had been rotated and dried, the students folded the clean bedding and stored it away. They were not allowed to make the beds for the residents, but they did take the time to make sure a folded sheet, blanket and pillow were sitting on each bed before they left. Bartlett House relies heavily on volunteers to run the shelter’s daily operations. When SPD began volunteering there in March, they were the first volunteers the organization had received in more than a month. “When they don’t have volunteers it means the two or three full-time employees they have are super-overworked,” said Peek. “When we learned that they hadn’t received a single volunteer in more than a month, we decided to send members to the shelter every week to help.” SPD is only required to complete 10 hours of volunteer service per semester but many of them kept showing up week after week to help at the shelter, with some accumulating more than 20 volunteer hours each. “The fact that the brothers are doing more than just looking to get the required number of hours shows us that they truly care about their community and are looking to make a difference,” said Boyd. “For me, you can never help people enough,” said Styer. “I’m not going to sit at home doing nothing when there are people in my community who need help. Communities thrive when the people within them help each other, and SPD’s mission is to encourage people to help others in any way that they can and we strive to set the example.”

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When Zachary Peek, a mechanical and aerospace engineering major from Burke, Virginia, was appointed philanthropy chair for Sigma Phi Delta, the professional engineering fraternity, he thought it was time to ramp up the organization’s volunteer efforts. SPD, which spends 70 percent of its time on philanthropic efforts, already volunteered at Ronald McDonald House, the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life and was a founding member of the Statler College’s new Career Closet.

Cover Story “I think the field of engineering and helping others goes hand in hand, so our members genuinely want to reach out and give back.” —Denna Davari

“... WITHOUT VOLUNTEERS WE DO NOT FUNCTION.”

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Between coursework, labs and design projects, most students look for ways to kick back and relax. Those ways, however, don’t usually including mucking horse stalls.

“Sometimes as an engineering student you need a break from all of the schoolwork, and being able to help others is a great way to spend downtime,” said Charleston native and recent graduate Denna Davari, former community service chair of the WVU section of the Society of Women Engineers. “I think the field of engineering and helping others goes hand in hand, so our members genuinely want to reach out and give back.” One of the most active student organizations within the Statler College, logging more than 760 volunteer hours this past year conducting STEM outreach programs for girls, the

members of SWE began looking for opportunities that would allow them to give back while also interacting with animals. “SWE has always been involved with outreach programs, but we hadn’t really branched out from College or STEM events,” said Thompson, who is also a SWE member. “We wanted to do more out in the community and found that most of us had a common interest in working with animals.” First, the members spent a day volunteering at Animal Friends of North Central West Virginia, a no-kill shelter located just outside of Morgantown. They cleaned kennels, bathed and walked the dogs and spruced up the

organization’s thrift shop that funds the facility. They capped the day off by socializing with the shelter animals. “We loved that the girls from SWE came to visit Animal Friends because they were so eager to help,” said shelter Director Rachel Wasserman. “Volunteers are so important because they help the animals adapt to socialization and

The nonprofit organization accommodates around 50 riders per year, and many of them see drastic differences in their physical, emotional and social abilities. Thompson shared stories with SWE members on how a young girl with a rare genetic disorder gained strength and the ability to walk as a result of her therapy and how another, who had limited verbal skills, can now form short sentences.

release built-up energy for our more active pets. It was nice to see the students take time from their busy schedules to lend a helping hand.”

Members from SWE were inspired by Thompson’s success stories and decided to spend a day preparing the facility for its next group of riders.

Thompson had spent several months volunteering at On Eagles’ Wings, a therapeutic horsemanship center located in Fairmont, and thought that volunteering for the organization would be a great opportunity for SWE.

“Programs that help disabled people are extremely important and are often overlooked,” said Davari. “Barns, especially one as large as Carol’s, require a ton of upkeep, so we were excited to help with such a great cause.”

“A lot of people have a stigma about those who are less fortunate or different than them and can oftentimes be judgmental,” said Thompson. “When you’re out with the horses working with people who have disabilities you don’t get the chance to think about those differences. Your focus is on making sure the horses are doing what they are supposed to be doing and ensuring that the riders are safe and having fun. Any judgments you may have fade away. This program is designed to help the riders but it also helps the volunteers see that we are all different and makes it easy to just accept that and move on.”

The week before finals, a group of 12 SWE members spent several hours on a cold rainy day completing the unglamorous task of cleaning the stalls and tidying up the barn. Those who had previously worked with horses coached the others on how to work around the animals so that they could take turns shoveling and raking out the stalls. Others spent the day pushing wheelbarrows, making dozens of trips to bring fresh sawdust into the stalls and cleaning windows in the arena.

The organization offers two types of therapy: a therapeutic riding program that provides participants with weekly assisted horseback riding lessons as well as hippotherapy, a therapeutic strategy that uses the motions of the horse as a way to build muscle and cognitive functions in the riders. If participants are unable to ride a horse due to physical limitations, the organization also provides ground lessons that teach grooming and stable management skills to ensure that they have a program fit for everyone. “Participants in our therapeutic riding programs often need three volunteers per lesson, one as the horse handler and two on each side of the rider for assistance in positioning and safety,“ said Carol Petitto, executive director of On Eagles’ Wings. “Without volunteers we do not function.”

“Barn work is definitely difficult but it is rewarding,” said Davari. “It taught us a lot of valuable skills, introduced us to new experiences and it was extremely therapeutic for us just to be around the horses. Engineering is a rigorous program and we oftentimes don’t get a chance to decompress. Being out on the farm in the middle of nowhere was so peaceful and the horses naturally have a way of calming people down. Carol has something really special going on at On Eagles’ Wings, and SWE was just absolutely thrilled to be able to give back and be a part of it for a day.” “The students who volunteered at the barn are smart selfstarters that didn’t require repeat instructions,” said Petitto. “We have students from all majors participate at On Eagles’ Wings but it really is the motivated and go-getter students, like the members of SWE, who are our best and most consistent volunteers.”

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“... It really is the motivated and go-getter students, like the members of SWE, who are our best and most consistent volunteers.” —Carol Petitto

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“… AVAILABLE ALL HOURS OF THE DAY AND NIGHT.” It’s one thing to be unable to get cell service at a sporting event or concert. It’s another when you can’t get it during an emergency situation. The Statler College’s oldest student organization—the WVU Amateur Radio Club—is working to remedy that situation. WVUARC provides communication services for events in the central Morgantown area due to their prime equipment location. The organizations “Ham Shack,” or equipment room, is located on the 11th floor of the Engineering Sciences Building, making it the best and most reliable location for radio communication services in the immediate area. “Ham radios are helpful in the event that there is an emergency, especially when dealing with a large crowd of people,” said Will Howard, an electrical engineering major from Morgantown and WVUARC’s vice president. “Cell phone signals can be unreliable around large groups of people whereas our radios have hardly no limitations that would cause them to malfunction.” The Shack currently houses high-frequency antennas and a repeater that receives weak amateur radio signals and retransmits them at a higher level so that the signal can cover a longer range. During events, such as the Morgantown Christmas Parade, which can draw crowds of more than 3,500 people, WVUARC members set up radio equipment that transmits through the repeater so that staff and emergency workers can communicate freely with anyone who has a radio throughout the day without incident.

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“Most amateur radio members have digital radios that use the same technology as cell phones, just in a different fashion,” said Howard. “Cell phones talk to each other but radios talk to anyone within range, making them a powerful tool, especially during emergencies. In the event of an emergency, say an ambulance needs to get through the parade route, we can quickly and simultaneously contact every person working with a radio to clear the roadway in no time at all.”

While WVUARC currently only provides services in the central Morgantown area, the Amateur Radio Emergency Service is a network of licensed volunteer amateur radio operators that provides communication services throughout the United States and Canada.

According to Allen Harris, ARES district coordinator for north central West Virginia and emergency coordinator for Monongalia County, ARES has provided local emergency services to organizations such as the American Red Cross and the National Guard during power outages, snowstorms and even last year’s floods in southern West Virginia. “There doesn’t need to be a complete loss of power and ability to communicate in order for ARES to provide its services,” said Harris. “During the floods last year in southern West Virginia many people lost power but cell phone signals were still available, even though they were spotty. ARES stepped in to ensure that the huge network of volunteers and emergency services on site had reliable forms of communication, which is our overall goal.” Having an extensive network of people and equipment is essential for being able to provide quick services throughout a large area in times of need. “I knew that WVUARC was very active on campus and out in the community and that their equipment, capabilities and location were sound so I encouraged them to join ARES,” said Harris. “Students are really handy to have in our network because they oftentimes have the most flexible schedules. We need people to monitor the radios at night and since most of our volunteers are full-time employees elsewhere it can be difficult to find people to do that. We can usually count on students to be available all hours of the day and night.” WVUARC have begun a series of trainings and drills in order to become certified ARES members. Starting in the fall, the organization will appoint an ARES emergency coordinator who will be the first point of contact for Monongalia County ARES in the event of an emergency. Once certified, the students will also be assisting with the West Virginia section of Project Life Saver, a search and rescue program for individuals with cognitive disabilities such as Alzheimer’s or autism. The program provides wearable transponders to special needs individuals who are at risk of wandering away.

“Cell phone signals can be unreliable around large groups of people whereas our radios have hardly no limitations that would cause them to malfunction.” —Will Howard

“If someone wearing a transponder is reported missing, members of WVUARC will be deployed to use a receiver to locate the person, which can usually be done in under 30 minutes,” said Howard. “WVUARC will benefit from being a part of the program because it will provide the chance for us to feel more attached to the Morgantown community.”

“Having WVUARC as a part of the ARES network will ensure that there is a backup emergency communications service right on campus to serve the WVU community and the county,” said Harris. “Most people don’t know that ARES exists and those that do like to think that disasters will never happen here. The reality is, especially in this day and age, anything could happen at any time and we just want people to know that if it does we are here and ready to serve as a backup.”

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WVUARC will also be working on a project with ARES and the Monongalia County 911 dispatch center to establish a station stocked with amateur radio equipment at their current location to ensure that they will always have a backup communications center in case of emergency.

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Cover Story

“… COMMITTED … UNTIL THE FIRST DROP OF CLEAN WATER FALLS …” With the school year complete, the students from Engineers Without Borders headed back to Prenter on the first day of their summer break to resume their work. “This town has been given the short end of the stick for years, and many residents expressed deep sadness in the fact that they have been mostly ignored,” said Gelety. “Prenter has a long way to go before we can give them an improved water system but we aren’t going to give up on them.” Residents watched as the team worked nonstop for two days through less-than-ideal weather conditions in order to recondition the second water storage tank. They took countless trips up a steep hill almost a quarter-mile long to transport their work supplies to the tank. A lack of equipment caused them to have to shovel gravel into the back of one of their SUVs to transport it to the worksite to improve muddy working conditions. By the end of day-one, the team was drenched in contaminated water and covered head to toe in mud. “In America people are down on young people, saying they are lazy and what not but down here in Prenter we just don’t see it,” said Coleman. “They didn’t have to be here spending their vacation working in the mud, but there they were, working hard.” Their unwavering dedication to the community paid off when residents of the community started noticing improvements in their water quality for the first time.

While the students plan to make at least three more trips to Prenter this year, they will soon reach a point where certified professionals will need to step in to complete restoration of the water system. “As students, we do not have the background to establish electrical lines, obtain state permits or examine the legal jargon of water utilities,” said Ahmed Haque, a chemical engineering major from Bridgeport and president of WVUEWB. “However, we are capable of starting a dialogue with administrators at WVU and state representatives in order to raise awareness and to recruit professionals with the experience necessary to bring clean water back to Prenter. “We represent WVU but we also have a duty to serve all people in the Mountain State,” said Haque. “We are committed to helping Prenter until the first drop of clean water falls from their faucets.”

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“In America people are down on young people, saying they are lazy and what not but down here in Prenter we just don’t see it,” said Coleman. “They didn’t have to be here spending their vacation working in the mud, but there they were, working hard.”

“Ever since the kids came and worked, the sulfur smell, which I have known my whole life, has become 95 percent better,” said Coleman. “These kids have really gotten the ball rolling and showed us that there is hope again. It has really motivated us to work together as a community, and we plan to follow through with this until we have sufficient water for the community because everyone deserves clean water.”

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Cover Story

Inaugural Engineering in Service Camp highlights importance of community service WRITTEN BY BRITTANY FURBEE

“As a land-grant institution, the faculty, staff and students at West Virginia University commit to creating a diverse and inclusive culture that advances education, healthcare and prosperity for all by providing access and opportunity; by advancing high-impact research; and by leading transformation in West Virginia and the world through local, state and global engagement.” —WVU Mission Statement

The College hoped to grow that same spirit in future Mountaineers when it hosted its first Engineering in Service Challenge Camp this past summer. The camp was attended by 23 high school students who participated in a series of daylong projects to gain unique hands-on community service experience while working as a team and applying creative problem-solving processes. “We describe engineers as problem-solvers who work in teams to find creative solutions,” said Schlobohm. “In terms of community service, these skills are incredibly valuable. We need people that can identify issues within the community and then, as a team, implement creative solutions to improve the quality of life within that community, whether it be locally or internationally.” During the camp students learned about land surveying, hydrology and architecture and how those engineering principles can be applied to community service projects. Campers put their new skills to the test by building foot bridges at Mason Dixon Park, installing a water diversion system at the West Virginia Botanical Gardens and pitching ideas to a professional architect on ways to reimage an abandoned city-owned building in Fairmont.

“It was really rewarding to do nice things for the community,” said Miles Kope, a freshman from Ashburn, Virginia. “It just feels good for me to help people, and I could tell when I stepped on to campus that WVU was a place that encourages people to give back.” “The service camp showed me that engineering is about coming up with innovative ideas that can make life better for people,” said Rebecca Osborne, a senior from Hurricane. “Giving back to others who are less fortunate is really important so I will probably study engineering when I go to college.” “If you want to help people, engineering is for sure one of the best fields to go into,” added Audrey Heaberlin, a senior from Huntington. “Engineers do almost everything. They are really underrated because they are the ones behind the scenes making everything work and they help others in a lot of different ways that people don’t even realize.” Many students felt inspired to pursue engineering degrees following such a rewarding camping experience that demonstrated how engineering and service go hand in hand. “Through the Engineering in Service camp we are working to instill that value at an earlier age,” said Schlobohm. “It will be fun to watch where the incoming students’ passions lie, because they will steer the direction of Statler service initiatives in the future.”

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“It is our job as professionals to instill the value of service into our undergraduate students, although most of them already have a natural desire to serve their communities,” said Cate Schlobohm, outreach coordinator for the Statler College. “Their passion for wanting to give back is infectious, and it pushes us all to be better Mountaineers.”

Engineering 360˚

STATLER COLLEGE OPENS

CAREER CLOSET The Statler College has opened the first Career Closet at West Virginia University. Engineering students can now obtain business attire on campus thanks to generous donations from WVU faculty, staff, alumni, students and members of the community. WVU hopes to expand this to the entire campus in the near future. “Last fall, there was signage in the College that advertised upcoming career fairs that featured a ‘wear this, not that’ tag. It showed two students in business attire juxtaposed with two students in what can best be described as attire inappropriate for most business environments,” said Mary C. Dillon, director of marketing and communications for the Statler College. “Unfortunately, I had seen some of our students at our career fair in similar attire. After discussing it with several colleagues at a women in technology conference in October, we all agreed that there was a simple way to solve it and someone just needed to make it happen.”

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With the help of the WVU chapters of Sigma Phi Delta, Alpha Omega Epsilon and the WVU Society of Women Engineers section, the Statler College Career Closet was established. Members of the organizations run the Closet, which allows students to take up to four items of career wear per semester that they can keep free of charge.

NESBIT

Scholarships and Fellowships KREPS WINS PRESTIGIOUS DOD SCHOLARSHIP

DEMASI

Sean Kreps, a computer science and electrical engineering major from Clear Spring, Maryland, is only the third student in WVU history to be awarded the SMART Scholarship, which includes full coverage of college tuition, health insurance, a miscellaneous supply allowance of $2,200 and a $25,000-a-year stipend. In addition to the monetary awards, Kreps participated in a summer internship at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was immersed in research and development projects related to automatic weapons systems.

NAMED WVU FOUNDATION SCHOLAR Wheeling native Miriam Demasi is one of five students to be named a WVU Foundation Scholar, the highest academic scholarship the University awards.

ELLIS

Demasi is keenly aware of environmental issues and has developed a building material made from waste paper, fly ash and lime. She wants to study abroad with Not Impossible Labs, a nonprofit engineering organization that uses technology to advance society. She plans to major in biomedical engineering and pursue research in organ and limb development.

FACULTY INSPIRE STUDENTS TO PURSUE RESEARCH, ACHIEVE NSF FELLOWSHIPS

Foundation Scholars receive in excess of $87,000 to cover college costs for four years of undergraduate studies, including tuition and fees, room and board and a book stipend. They also receive a $4,500 stipend to be used to broaden their horizons through study abroad or academic enhancement opportunities such as internships.

One WVU student will take her research project to a new level and one will bring her research to the Statler College thanks to prestigious graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation.

Kathrine Curtin, a recent graduate of St. Vincent College, came to WVU to pursue her graduate studies under Nianqiang “Nick” Wu. Wu, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is a widely cited scholar and award-winning researcher.

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“I consider it a blessing from God that as an undergraduate student, I’ve had the opportunity to work under the guidance of Dr. Kostas Sierros and Maria Torres,” Grant said. “I have been molded into the burgeoning researcher that I am today because they invested time and attention to my development.”

PERSINGER

LYNNORA GRANT KATHRINE CURTIN

Lynnora Grant of Jefferson County, an Honors student and McNair Scholar, was awarded a GRF for biomedical engineering and is attending Rice University to pursue research on materials science and nano-engineering. Grant, who graduated this past year with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, credits her success to the mentorship of professors in the Statler College, particularly Kostas Sierros.

Engineering 360˚

Gilpin, Beard awarded Goldwater Scholarships WRITTEN BY MARY C. DILLON, PHOTOGRAPHS BY J. PAIGE NESBIT

West Virginia University has a long history of undergraduate students winning the Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s most prestigious award in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. That history continued in 2017. Honors students Anna Gilpin, a biomedical engineering major from Martinsburg, and Jared Beard, a mechanical engineering major and physics minor from Morgantown, are the 43rd and 44th students at WVU to earn the award since the program’s inception in 1986. The scholarship provides as much as $7,500 for tuition, fees, books and room and board for students who demonstrate their aptitude through coursework and their own original research. Gilpin, who is the second-straight biomedical engineering major at WVU to win the award, has been conducting research in the area of regenerative medicine since the summer before her sophomore year. Gilpin has been researching ways to develop a non-damaging method of decellularization using supercritical carbon dioxide, a process that involves isolating the extracellular matrix, or ECM, from its native cells and genetic material. She is currently working to design a stem cell biomanufacturing technique that involves culturing cells that develop into connective tissue, blood vessels and lymphatic tissue within collagen microspheres of physiological stiffness. “The ECM contains biological and structural components that regulate and support cell function,” Gilpin explained. “By isolating it via decellularization, you can use it as a foundation to create a personalized tissue by adding a patient’s own cells back to it. Additionally, it can be used to facilitate cell growth in in vitro cell cultures.

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“Regenerative medicine is an exciting field because it has the potential to be hugely impactful for human health through revolutionizing the treatment of a multitude of diseases and disorders,” she continued. “It may replace current treatments that are ineffective or inaccessible for patients by harnessing the natural mechanisms of the body, which is ultimately the most powerful tool.”

Gilpin had the opportunity to present her research at the 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers student conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Beard’s interest in how things worked led him to mechanical engineering but he was confused on what he might ultimately do with his degree. That all came into focus his freshman year when he had the opportunity to work in the Flexible Electronics for Sustainable Technologies Lab under the direction of Kostas Sierros, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering. That experience cemented his interest in materials. “Dr. Sierros has helped me grow as a researcher,” Beard said. “He has provided me with support and guidance for all aspects of research, from technical writings to designing and conducting experiments. Working in the FEST Lab gave me experience working with both the design and implementation of 3-D printing devices and printable materials. This includes work toward developing layers for solar cells and improving our in-house built 3-D printer, among other projects.” In 2016, Beard participated in an International Research Experience for Students between WVU and the University of Crete-Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas. He and six other students worked on research projects with photocatalytic, thermochromics and gas sensing materials. Joining him on the trip were Dimitris Korakakis, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, and George Kiriakidis, an adjunct professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering. “As part of the IRES program, Drs. Sierros and Korakakis provided a forum to engage with all stages of a research project and background knowledge on the culture in Greece,” Beard said. “While in Crete, Dr. Kiriakidis offered a new perspective. He was very supportive of both our group’s development as researchers and assimilation to the Cretan culture. Furthermore, as a physicist, he offered a new perspective on research. It was one that placed a strong emphasis on understanding the mechanisms behind a process, in addition to the outcomes.” Beard plans to incorporate his interest in materials along with his affinity for programming and interfacing mechanical systems with computers in graduate school. He will be studying ways to integrate robotics and materials science for the improvement of advanced manufacturing processes.

RETIREES The following people have officially retired from the Statler College September 2015-June 2017. We thank them for their years of service. Chuck Coleman Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Ray Morehead Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Thomas Hall Mining Extension Karla Vaughn Mining Engineering Cliff Judy Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Royce Watts Administration Alice Kerns Administration John Kuhlman Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Ed Crow Industrial Extension Felicia Peng Mining Engineering

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ANNA GILPIN JARED BEARD

Engineering 360˚

Winners ... ... TARGET CASE STUDY COMPETITION Teams featuring seven engineering students captured the top three places in the Third Annual Target Case Study Competition. The competition challenges teams of students to use their problem-solving skills to provide well-rounded solutions to a business problem. Top honors went to industrial engineering majors Seth Porter and C.J. Hores (Wheeling), Dylan Hupp (St. Mary’s) and Stephen Mareske (Charlotte, North Carolina). The four are also members of WVU’s Honors College. The team, winners of $1,500, made a number of suggestions including better space utilization to make room for small-scale distribution centers at each store, offering same day/next day delivery by Target-owned trucks and manipulation of current inventory in an attempt to make a trip to Target a shopping experience vs. a shopping trip.

... CIVIL ENGINEERING REGIONAL COMPETITION

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For the second straight year, a team from WVU captured first place in the steel bridge competition at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Virginias Conference, held at Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia, March 30-April 1.

Fifteen WVU engineering students attended the competition with the 260-pound steel bridge they designed and built over the past eight months. In addition to winning the steel bridge competition, WVU placed first in the transportation competition; second in the hardy cross presentation, sand castle building and concrete bowling competition; and fourth in the concrete canoe competition.

The second-place team, winners of $1,000, featured Morgantown natives Sklyer Roth, a biomedical engineering major (Honors College), and Shannon Roth, a management information systems major in the College of Business and Economics. Two more industrial engineers—Clay Chipps (Honors College) and KayLee Pethtel—finished third, winning $500.

... HIGHER EDUCATION MARKETING For the second straight year, the staff in the Statler College’s Office of Marketing and Communications has been recognized for their work in the 32nd Annual Educational Advertising Awards, sponsored by Higher Education Marketing Report. The College’s holiday card, which features Cataglyphis, the robot that won NASA’s Sample Return Robot Challenge, won a gold award in the “Publication/Other” category. The Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering’s Annual Report won a bronze medal in the “Annual Report” category. Merit awards went to the fall 2016 issue of EWV Magazine and the College’s admissions travel piece.

WILSON

... REGIONAL MINE RESCUE COMPETITION WVU’s student Mine Rescue team placed second at the Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration’s Eastern Collegiate Mine Rescue Contest, held in Lexington, Kentucky, this spring. WVU sent two teams to the competition. The WVU Gold and WVU Blue teams were each made up of seven students who were judged on two components: a statement of facts test and a mine exploration problem.

... COLLEGIATE BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION Keith Heisler, a sophomore from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, presented one of three winning proposals in the 2017 West Virginia Statewide Collegiate Business Competition. Heisler, an aerospace engineering major, claimed the victory in the Lifestyle and Innovation category with H2OLD IT, which provides innovative luxury products for living environments. The products provide comfort while also conserving natural resources and providing financial savings.

The test required one randomly selected member from each team to answer a 10-question test based on more than 100 possible mine safety facts. Each missed question resulted in a reduction in score. For the mine exploration problem, each team had to explore and ventilate a simulated mining environment with hazardous situations and bring a mock patient to safety. Teams were judged on time, mapping of the mine and following correct procedures and rules while exploring the mine. The WVU Gold team placed second, and the WVU Blue team placed fifth.

KEITH HEISLER

Student teams compete for the $10,000 first prize in each category, as well as accounting and legal services. The winning teams must turn their ideas into valid West Virginia businesses in a designated amount of time. A record 303 entries were submitted in this year’s competition from a record-tying 15 West Virginia colleges and universities. The competition is hosted by the WVU BrickStreet Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

... HUMAN POWERED VEHICLE CHALLENGE

There are two stages to the competition. First, the teams are judged on the preparation of a comprehensive design report. The second stage includes a demonstration of a technical innovation included in the design, a speed event (either 100 meter flying start time trial or head-to-head drag racing) and a 2.5 hour endurance race held over the course of a weekend.

SHEPHARD

The 10-student team from WVU, which competed as part of their senior capstone course, placed fourth in the innovation challenge for their recumbent tricycle. It featured a uniquely designed in-situ structural health monitoring system, which calculated, saved and displayed the real-time stresses and strains present in the tricycles’ frame during the competition. The team placed 11th overall.

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Students from WVU placed in two categories at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, held in Cookeville, Tennessee. The HPVC provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate the application of sound engineering design principles in the development of sustainable and practical transportation alternatives. Students work in teams to design and build efficient, highly engineered vehicles for everyday use—from commuting to work to carrying goods to market.

Engineering 360˚

MIDAS brings home the gold in NASA’s Mars Ice Challenge

FALL 2017

WRITTEN BY MARY C. DILLON, PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANIA

West Virginia University was the only school in the nation to send two teams to NASA’s Mars Ice Challenge, a three-day event held in June that challenged teams to extract water from simulated Martian subsurface ice. In the end, one team—Mountaineer Ice Drilling Automated System or MIDAS—had the golden touch.

drilling and water extraction systems on Earth that could be modified for use on Mars. Teams tested their drilling systems on simulated Martian subsurface ice stations—solid blocks of ice covered with a mixture of clay and gravel approximately one meter deep. Teams competed to extract the most water from the ice station.

Led by team lead Eric Loy, a master’s degree student in electrical engineering from Keyser, and advisor Powsiri Klinkhachorn, professor of computer science and electrical engineering, MIDAS captured top overall honors in the competition, besting the likes of teams from the Colorado School of Mines, University of TexasAustin and University of Pennsylvania. The team also was first in both the most water collected and the cleanest water categories.

“The approach we took to this competition was one of thoroughness,” Loy said, noting the team worked with colleagues in civil engineering to conduct soil compaction studies and to inspect and analyze the rig for structural soundness at various stages in the weight reduction phase.

Held at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, the Mars Ice Challenge tasked teams to create innovative designs for

“We also partnered with faculty and students in the Department of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering,” Loy added. “Their knowledge helped shape our drilling rig and showed us the importance of bit stabilization as well as relevant drilling techniques.”

The team’s strategy for the competition was to drill a hole into the simulated Martian soil and subsurface ice, melt ice for the majority of each day and then pump out all of the water near the end. “The MIDAS extraction system was designed to be an all-in-one solution that consisted of everything needed to melt ice and pump water from within a hole bored by the drilling system,” Loy said. “There were some similarities in everyone’s approach, but, for the most part, everyone’s idea was pretty unique.” On the first day of the actual drilling competition, MIDAS was able to extract 400 milliliters of clear water with a turbidity of 4.7. However, some simulated Martian soil fell into the water and clogged the holes in the tip of the heat sink/radiator before the team could finish pumping all the water. The team regrouped on day two, using the heat sink/radiator as a heat

“The heater was in contact with ice and water the entire time and heat transfer to the ice was more efficient,” Loy said. “A large amount of simulated Martian soil collapsed into the hole and turned to mud as we continued to heat. We didn’t know until the end of the day when nothing could be pumped out of the hole.” The day one and day two totals were enough to secure the competition for MIDAS. “We are glad to be the first to design and demonstrate a system that is able to extract water under simulated Mars conditions,” Klinkhachorn added. “The first drop of water extracted on simulated Mars belongs to WVU!” Joining Loy on MIDAS were David-Michael Buckman (computer engineering and computer science, WVU Honors College) from Inwood; Adam Chandler (computer science, Honors College) from West Hamlin; Devyn Gentzyel (computer engineering and biometric systems) from Enterprise, Alabama; Matt Gramlich (electrical and computer engineering) from Hurricane; Scott Harper (mechanical and aerospace engineering) from Spencer; Nicholas Mireles (computer engineering) from Fredericksburg, Virginia; Jenn Nguyen (computer science) from Morgantown; Nick Ohi (mechanical and aerospace engineering) from Morgantown; Karan Sah (mechanical and aerospace engineering, Honors College) from Lexington, South Carolina; Jared Strader (mechanical engineering) from Morgantown; Jacob Winokur (mechanical and aerospace engineering) from Chesapeake, Virginia; and Bertrand Wieliczko (electrical and computer engineering) from Holderness, New Hampshire. Associate Professor Ilkin Bilgesu (petroleum and natural gas engineering) co-advised the team. Additional assistance was provided by Professor Hota GangaRao and Associate Professor John Quarantar (civil and environmental engineering).

Loy noted that auger-style bits were popular in the competition. Other systems involved extracting ice cores and melting them externally, melting the ice shavings pulled up by the drill system through heating units or microwave technology and injecting hot oil while drilling ice and pumping out the results into a storage tank where water would naturally separate in the mixture and be collected. This system was employed by WVU’s second entry in the competition, the In-Situ Resource Extraction System team. “After reaching the ice, we would drill two-three inches into the ice to prevent any contamination by the soil. We would then begin extraction operations by pumping heated sunflower oil through the drill stem and into the ice while running the drill to melt the ice cuttings,” said Grant Speer, a graduate student in mining engineering from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. “Hot oil would pool in the borehole for a short time to maximize the volume of ice that could be melted before the oil became viscous. We would then pump the oil and meltwater out of the borehole and into a separation tank. The water and oil separated based on density and temperature differences, allowing us to then collect the water and recirculate the oil back into the system.” The team spent several hours on day one of the competition troubleshooting electronic issues with the control system. Unfortunately, system checks failed to identify that a second pump was connected backward and that two valves were no longer operational. Speer added that the team could have used a more powerful motor to generate greater ice cuttings. “Had we avoided these failures, I’m confident that we could have extracted more water,” Speer said. “Based on these lessons learned, the team is in a great position to improve on the system and go back next year with an even stronger approach and prototype.”

Klinkhachorn congratulated the In-Situ team, noting, “I would like to congratulate (team advisor) Thomas Evans and the members of his team on their efforts. It was a hard problem to solve.” For Loy, the Mars Ice Challenge signifies the end of a very successful career at WVU. He has been a member of a number of robotics teams, including NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkages or Robo-Ops Competition and the Mercury Remote Robot Challenge. He has finished his master’s coursework and is now working on his thesis. “I am grateful for all my experiences with the robotics team,” Loy said. “I’d like to thank Dr. Klinkhachorn and the numerous team members who have made this experience very memorable over the past couple of years. I’d also like to thank WVU and our various sponsors, including the Statler College, the Lane Department, the Department of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering and the West Virginia Space Grant Consortium for making these opportunities possible.”

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probe instead of drilling to target depth first and then deploying the extraction system.

Engineering 360˚

WVU nabs fourth-place finish in year three of EcoCAR 3 competition

WRITTEN BY BRITTANY FURBEE

Manager Matt Bergman, a graduate student in electrical engineering from Clarksburg. “Our car finished the course in one minute and eight seconds, just three seconds more than the GM demonstration car.” The teams then headed to the nation’s capital, where they showcased their work in various technical, communications and project management presentations.

“In preparation for the competition there was never a moment when the garage was empty. Our team worked day and night to get the wheels spinning in year three, however we went well beyond that,” said Team Communications Manager Caitlin Worrell, a graduate “Throughout the two weeks of competition we student in journalism from Virginia “One of the great things about the Beach, Virginia. “We were able to had numerous judges and sponsors come up to us EcoCAR competition is that the hold nine events both on campus and comment on how impressed they were with student team members are faced with and within our local community like the growth our team has made during the first real-world situations and problems,” our Snapchat Takeover and Camaro three years of this competition.” —Howard Bugg said four-time WVU graduate Bill cookie decorating event. Through Cawthorne, senior manager for our outreach efforts we were able advanced engineering in global transmission and electrification at General to reach more than 7,500 people in the Morgantown area and acquired Motors and WVU EcoCAR team mentor. “They follow a vehicle development four new local sponsors.” process similar to what is used in industry and use many of the same “The team as a whole worked extremely hard and spent countless hours to software design tools as industry professionals. They have to learn how to refine the vehicle and to improve project management while continuing our become leaders, to delegate and to work as a team.” history of quality work in communications and outreach,” added Andrew The WVU team, made up of students from the Statler College, the Reed Nix, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and College of Media and the College of Business and Economics, headed to EcoCAR 3 faculty advisor. “All the teams worked together throughout the Milford, Michigan, to the General Motors Milford Proving Grounds where year and having high-quality technical capabilities coupled with outstanding they underwent a series of safety and technical inspections including team leadership made the difference at this year’s competition.” dynamic safety, acceleration and performance testing and energy The team placed fourth overall in the competition, up three spots from last consumption events. The WVU Camaro, which features a large electric year, and won first place in the AVL DRIVE Quality Event. motor that allows for easier maintenance and a higher speed threshold, performed exceptionally well during the dynamic and performance events “Throughout the two weeks of competition we had numerous judges and that required the vehicle to be evaluated in acceleration and braking, sponsors come to us and comment on how impressed they were with the ride and drive quality and consumer appeal, in addition to emissions and growth our team has made during the first three years of this competition,” energy consumption. said Team Project Manager Howard Bugg, a graduate student majoring in mechanical engineering from Morgantown. “EcoCAR can be a competition “We passed the dynamic safety test on the first attempt, making WVU one of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ with a few schools making up the upper of only seven teams that qualified for the autocross event, a cone course tier year after year. Being able to break into that group with our fourthnavigated at high speeds by GM professionals,” said Team Engineering place finish was something extremely exciting for our team.” REGAN

FALL 2017

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors, EcoCAR 3 is an advanced vehicle technology competition that gives teams from 16 universities across the nation four years to redesign a Chevrolet Camaro to reduce its environmental impact, while maintaining the muscle and performance expected from this iconic American car.

FECHT

With one year left to go in the fouryear EcoCAR 3 competition, the team from West Virginia University finds itself in some pretty good company. After a two-week stint that featured stops in Michigan and Washington, D.C., the team from WVU placed fourth overall, joining Ohio State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Georgia Tech at the top.

WVU takes first place in Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition WRITTEN BY BRITTANY FURBEE

“I am so proud of each and every member of WVU’s EcoCAR 3 team,” said Cawthorne. “This team worked extremely hard and was dedicated to being successful. They were able to build upon the strong foundation established by the year one and two teams to continue rising through the rankings. They have represented WVU and the Statler College in the best possible way.” The team has already begun preparing for next year’s fourth and final EcoCAR 3 competition, which will focus on refining vehicle controls to present a production-ready prototype Camaro. “The competition is very strong and simply being one of the 16 participating schools is an accomplishment, which makes the fourth-place finish all that much sweeter,” said Cawthorne. “The climb gets steeper as you approach the top, so the road to number one will be difficult. There are strong teams ahead of us, and those behind us will be working hard to leapfrog us. However, I have confidence that with continued hard work, dedication, attention to detail and the support of the College and University that being the overall year four winner is a distinct possibility.”

Prior to launch, the team was scored on a poster presentation that explained the rocket’s specifications as well as various technical papers and progress reports that were submitted throughout the year.

The competition challenges teams of college students to design, build and launch solid-, liquid or hybrid-fuel rockets to a targeted altitude. More than 100 teams from around the world competed in the event, which is run by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association.

“While flying the rocket is by far one of best parts of the competition, there is so much more that we are scored on,” said Hale. “We have to do well in every portion of the competition to even be considered for a win.”

The six-member team from WVU crafted a 12-foot long fiberglass rocket—emblazoned with the words “Wild and Wonderful”—that performed exceptionally well, soaring to an altitude of more than 9,600 feet while carrying nearly nine pounds of payload. “Our key to success was all of the preparation we did for the competition,” said Cameron Hale, a petroleum and natural gas engineering major from Blaine, Kentucky, and team vice president. “This was actually the first year that we had the time and budget to test fly the rocket before the competition so we knew that all of the individual systems of the rocket worked ahead of time.”

The team received top scores in all aspects of the competition, beating out 24 teams in their category for the victory. “This year’s competition was one of the toughest yet with more than 100 teams registering for the event overall,” said Hale. “We were competing against some of the best teams in the world, so taking home first in our category is an unbelievable honor! Seeing all this year’s hard work pay off is one of the best feelings in the world.”

In April, the team traveled to Price, Maryland, for a test flight at a Tripoli Rocketry Association event where their rocket flew to an altitude of 9,100 feet.

Team members joining Hale in New Mexico were mechanical and aerospace engineering majors Matt Hines (Buffalo, WVU Honors College), Austin Hodges (Millsboro, Delaware, Honors College), Zach Maddams (Claymont, Delaware, Honors College) and Kevin Nadler (Southbury, Connecticut), and chemical engineering major Nick Haynes (Princeton, Honors College).

“After the test flight we ran simulations to compare our test site with the one in New Mexico, taking into consideration the temperature, altitude and wind in the desert,” said Hale. “The results showed us reaching a much higher altitude under those conditions so we actually decided not to make any changes to our rocket, which proved to be the right decision.”

The team was sponsored by the Statler College, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the WVU Student Government Association, NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium, NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation Facility, Aurora Flight Sciences, Pscolka Woodworks, Reid and Tonya Elattrache, Jim Bordas and the Fritzinger family.

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The team also placed fourth in project management, with Bugg winning the Spirit of Project Management Award and Worrell placing third for Best Communications Program. The team brought home more than $8,000 in prize money.

West Virginia University’s Experimental Rocketry team captured first place in the 10,000-foot launch category at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition during the Spaceport America Cup, held near Las Cruces, New Mexico, June 20-24.

In the Spotlight

otlight: In the SStap ff Recognition FALL 2017

Faculty and

NESBIT

left to right in order of appearance

Nianqiang “Nick” Wu, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, has been named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Wu, a materials scientist, conducts research in photocatalysts and photoelectrochemical cells for solar energy harvesting, batteries and supercapacitors for energy storage, chemical sensors and biosensors for healthcare and environment monitoring. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Energy. The Royal Society of Chemistry, founded in 1841, is the United Kingdom’s professional body for chemical scientists and the largest organization in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences. The designation FRSC is given to a group of elected Fellows who have made outstanding contributions to chemistry. As of 2016, only 108 scientists have earned this designation. James Dean, director of mining and industrial extension, has been selected for membership in Careers in Coal, a group dedicated to the best interests of the coal industry. Founded in 1963, CI-Coal provides members with an ongoing forum to discuss coal industry problems and opportunities. Its 71 geographically diverse members represent a cross-section of management levels throughout the industry. The organization’s Lamplighter Awards are given annually to outstanding seniors at four universities that offer mining engineering degrees: WVU, Virginia Tech, Penn State and University of Kentucky.

Hema Siriwardane, professor of civil and environmental engineering, was appointed chair of the department for a five-year term, effective April 16. Siriwardane, who had been serving as interim chair since August 2016, has been on the faculty in the Statler College for more than 35 years. Samuel Ameri was reappointed as chair of the Department of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering for a five-year term, beginning July 1. Ameri, who was reviewed in several categories, received high marks in virtually every category, most notably leadership and planning, personnel management and external relations. He was also named Outstanding Professor and Department Chair of the Year by the WVU Student Government Association Student Assembly. The awards recognize how Ameri’s service, teaching and research have significantly impacted the campus community, his students and his field of research. Praveen Majjigapu, a doctoral student in civil engineering, has been named inaugural national chair for the Structural Engineering Institute Graduate Student Chapter Leadership Council. The council represents SEI graduate student chapters at universities across the United States. The WVU Chapter, which was named national Student Chapter of the Year in 2016, has been active in providing educational opportunities and speaking opportunities to present research in conjunction with professional events and the SEI Structures Congress. They have worked to promote civil engineering to undergraduates and prospective graduate students and have provided outreach to K-12 students. Members have also assisted in forming the policies and procedures that govern the SEI graduate student chapters. Majjigapu serves as WVU chapter president. Shams Khan, who has been named assistant dean for development, has amassed a considerable track record in fundraising, alumni relations and relationship building. A three-time graduate of Western Michigan University, Khan spent seven years at his alma mater working in a variety of roles including associate vice president for engagement. During his tenure he oversaw development and alumni relations for the College of Engineering and Applied Science as well as the Colleges of Aviation and Education and Human Development.

Michelle Poland, academic success program coordinator in the Fundamentals of Engineering Program, was one of four outstanding student advisors to be honored with the 2017 Nicholas Evans Excellence in Advising Award. Poland advises 200250 freshmen in the Statler College each semester. She also leads New Student Orientation efforts, organizes the College’s Welcome Week activities, directs the Eugene V. Cilento Learning Center and is a member of the WVU Advising Development Collaborative. Vladislav Kecojevic has been named interim chair of mining engineering and was reappointed the Massey Foundation Professor of Mining. Kecojevic has been recognized internationally for his contributions to the mining industry. Earlier this year, he was awarded the Erskine Ramsay Medal from the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers for his contributions to the research, education and service in surface coal mining and for his international recognition as a researcher, teacher and academic leader. David Graham (not pictured), associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, and Lizzie Santiago (not pictured), teaching associate professor of Fundamentals of Engineering, were two of six people selected for the 2017 Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching, which honors exceptional professors who go above and beyond to inspire their students. Graham uses hands-on experience and practical applications to teach students about power electronics, signal processing and bio-inspired electronic systems. He incorporates industry-standard computer-aided design tools in the classroom and emphasizes the fabrication and testing of studentdesigned integrated circuits to make classroom work both highly advanced and engaging to students. Graham is a recipient of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (2012) and the cofounder of Aspinity, a technology transfer start-up for electronic applications. Santiago is committed to helping freshman succeed both in and out of the classroom. She also works to improve retention rates. She has received two grants from the NSF for her work and was the 2015 Statler College Teacher of the Year. Santiago teaches freshman engineering courses while supporting outreach and recruitment and researching the engineering applications of critical thinking, stem cell research, biomaterials and more.

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R. Jason Dean, who has worked at WVU for more than a decade in a variety of budget-management roles, has been named assistant dean for administration. He will have oversight for the College’s finances, as well as human resources, information technology, safety and facilities. Dean joined the College in 2014 as chief business planning officer. He was responsible for payroll, procurement, and sponsored research activities for the College, including supervising a business office with 10 budgetary units, an annual budget of $120 million and a staff of eight employees.

Engineering 360˚

ORDERS INDUCTED INTO STATE BUSINESS HALL OF FAME

VERL PURDY

Robert O. Orders, CEO of Orders Construction Company, Inc., was inducted into the West Virginia Business Hall of Fame in August. Orders graduated from WVU in 1972 with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and went on to become a registered professional engineer in West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland. As CEO, he helped to grow Orders Construction Company from a small West Virginia bridge construction ROBERT ORDERS firm into a regional provider of a wide range of construction services. Orders previously served as president of the Contractors Association of West Virginia and as a trustee for the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Currently, he serves on the advisory board of BB&T in Charleston, and as a trustee of the Nature Conservancy of West Virginia. He is a member of the board of directors of the WVU Foundation and the board of directors of the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation, and is a trustee at First Presbyterian Church of Charleston.

KERRI KNOTS

ALUMNI, FACULTY MEMBER INDUCTED INTO TAU BETA PI Alumni Verl Purdy and Kerri Knotts joined David Klinke, associate professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, as inductees into Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honorary. The trio were inducted as practicing engineers, with each achieving eminence in engineering as determined by TBP headquarters. The inductions were held as part of the organization’s 39th annual district four conference, which was hosted by WVU in April.

DAVID KLINKE

ENGINEERING AROUND THE WORLD Most engineers spend their days in offices or cubicles, working on design solutions for their respective companies. But Tyler Hartman isn’t most engineers. TYLER HARTMAN

Hartman, a 2013 graduate with dual majors in mechanical and aerospace engineering, has spent the past year snowboarding in the Swiss Alps, riding camels in Morocco and taking selfies in front of the Taj Mahal thanks to Remote Year. The program is designed to allow digital nomads to travel the world while maintaining their jobs by working remotely. A project engineer with Acme Mechanical Contractors in Washington, D.C., Hartman was one of 75 professionals selected from different backgrounds and industries to spend a year working, traveling and impacting various cities. Remote Year assisted Hartman in setting up a proposal to pitch to his superiors at Acme. The company accepted, and he has been jetting around the world since August 2016.

FALL 2017

During his travels Hartman, who has been to nearly 20 countries in eight months, has learned a lot about the art of being flexible, and credits much of his success in the program to his time spent as a student at WVU.

“I am forever grateful to WVU for not only teaching me technical engineering knowledge, but also how to be agile, adaptive and confident in my work,” Hartman added. “These are the intangible skills that have really shaped my daily life and successful career.”

BP EXEC DELIVERS ANNUAL HINER LECTURE Mark Finley, general manager, Global Energy Markets and U.S. Economics at BP, presented the “2017 Edition of the BP Energy Outlook,” to a standing-room only crowd as part of the Glen H. Hiner Distinguished Lecture Series. The Energy Outlook considers a base case, outlining the most likely path for global energy markets over the next 20 years based on assumptions and judgements about future changes in policy, technology and the economy. It examines some of the key questions and issues posed by the energy transition, and develops a number of alternative cases to explore key uncertainties. Finley has served as chair of the U.S. Conference of Business Economists as well as the American Petroleum Institute’s Committee on Economics and Statistics. He also has served as vice president of the International Association of Energy Economics and was a 2013 Senior Fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics. He sits on the external advisory board of the University of Michigan Energy Institute and is an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

MARK FINLEY AND GENE CILENTO

David Wyrick, associate dean for academic affairs, attended the 2017 International Top-Level Forum on Engineering Science and Technology Development Strategy–Clean Energy Technology DAVID WYRICK and Engineering Management, hosted by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Shenhua Group. He presented a paper, co-authored by Brian Anderson, on the work of the WVU Energy Institute with China and how the American Society of Engineering Management can structure numerous case studies for Chinese and American engineers, managers and students.

STUDENTS EXPERIMENT WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO DETECT FAKE NEWS

FAKE

Students and faculty at WVU aren’t waiting for internet giants like Google and Facebook to provide solutions to fake news. The Reed College of Media, in collaboration with computer science students and faculty in the Statler College, hosted an artificial intelligence course at its Media Innovation Center that includes two projects focused on using AI to detect and combat fake news articles. Students in the senior-level computer science elective course worked in teams to develop and implement their own AI programs under the instruction of Don McLaughlin, a research associate and retired faculty member of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Stephen Woerner, a computer science major, was on one of the teams charged with creating a system that detects fake news articles. His team’s approach utilized a machine learning system to analyze text and generate a score that represents each article’s likeliness that it is fake news. Woerner added that this score is accompanied by a breakdown that explains the rating and provides transparency.

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WYRICK ATTENDS INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON CLEAN ENERGY TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

Thrasher delivers 2017 Commencement address

Engineering 360˚

West Virginia Secretary of Commerce H. Wood “Woody” Thrasher, a 1977 civil engineering graduate of WVU, was the speaker for the Statler College’s 2017 Commencement. He shared some “Woody-isms”—advice garnered from years of accumulated wisdom—with the more than 600 graduates in attendance.

“You fundamentally have the skill set to fix our world! Now, go do it!”

“Personally, I have always found it most helpful to identify the endpoint. … Recognize that you will drift to the left or right or up or down, but generally we are aiming for that endpoint. I call it vectoring in a generally correct direction. Remember the linear fashion you were taught? Well, learn to vector. This often results in unexpected discoveries.”

FALL 2017

“If you aim at nothing, you are bound to hit it. … Develop the ability to find the positive that offsets every negative then move in the direction of your goal. The more you put into life, the more you will get out of it!”

“Go forth and fail. … If you don’t fail, you have not tested your limits.”

“You can go from point A to point B and the problem is solved reasonably quickly and in a linear form. Life is not like that. Life is more vague, ambiguous, uncertain and subject to variables.”

“Have a sense of urgency. Sometimes life is best analyzed when you project yourself toward the end of it and look back to see what you accomplished.”

“It’s not important where you are in life. It’s the direction you’re going that counts. It allows you to avoid comparing yourself to others. … Don’t let the accomplishments and goals of someone else cloud yours. After you have done your best, be happy with yourself.”

“I think it’s better to get 10 things done—eight of which are right— than to only get four things done. Don’t let the process and the absolute necessity to be correct limit your accomplishments.”

JESSICA ALLEN Assistant Professor Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Education: PhD, University of Texas, ’12 MS, University of Texas, ’09 BS, University of Florida, ’06

MARGARET F. BENNEWITZ Assistant Professor Chemical and Biomedical Engineering Education: PhD, Yale University, ’12 MS, Yale University, ’09 BS, University of Pittsburgh, ’07

QINGQING HUANG Assistant Professor Mining Engineering Education: PhD, University of Kentucky, ’16 BS, Central South University, China, ’09

Teaching interests: coal preparation, mineral Teaching interests: processing, surface chemistry   biomechanics, dynamics, Teaching interests: biomedical computational modeling Research interests: mineral imaging, biomaterials and processing, coal preparation, Research interests: tissue interactions, stem cell explosion mitigation, extractive neuromuscular biomechanics engineering metallurgy (aging, injury and diseaseResearch interests: biomedical related mobility impairments), imaging for cancer rehabilitation engineering applications and musculoskeletal modeling and simulation

IHSAN “BERK” TULU

SHUO WANG

Assistant Professor Mining Engineering

Assistant Professor Chemical and Biomedical Engineering

Education: PhD, West Virginia University, ’12 MS, WVU, ’09 BS, Middle East Technical University, Turkey, ’04

Education: PhD, California Institute of Technology, ’14 BS, National University of Singapore, China, ’08

Teaching interests: mine surveying, engineering CAD, applied mineral computer methods and ground control/rock mechanics Research interests: coal/stone/ hardrock pillar stability, coal bump/ burst, rock drilling and fragmentation

Teaching interests: cognitive neuroscience, human electrophysiology and research methods in neuroscience Research interests: Human intracranial electrophysiology and cognitive and social neuroscience

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PHOTOGRAPHS BY M.G. ELLIS

New Faculty

2016-2017 Year in Review While 2015-2016 brought international notoriety for the Statler College’s research efforts related to vehicle emissions, 2016-2017 was the year that our “out-of-this-world” efforts on a variety of fronts caught people’s attention.

FALL 2017

In July, three civil engineering researchers—Hota GangaRao, P.V. Vijay and Mark Skidmore— were part of a team awarded the 2016 United States Army Corps of Engineers Innovation of the Year Award for their research on composite components for locks and dam systems. The trio, from WVU’s Constructed Facilities Center, worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Illinois, to design, test and implement glass-fiber reinforced plastic wicket gates at the Peoria Lock and Dam on the Illinois River at Creve Coeur, Illinois. Wicket gates help maintain a navigational pool in the river by resting on the bottom of the river and being raised when the water gets too low.

Yanfang (Fanny) Ye, assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering, was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation in support of her work to develop intelligent malware detection and resilient techniques against cyberattacks. The award came with $481,693 in funding over a three-year period.

In the shot heard round the world, Ginny Thrasher, a sophomore biomedical engineering major from Springfield, Virginia, became the first U.S. Olympic Gold medalist when she captured top honors in the women’s 10m air rifle at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympic Games. Days later, industrial engineering alumnus Nicco Campriani won gold in the men’s 10m air rifle competition and successfully defended his 2012 title in the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions competition, giving him three golds and one silver during his Olympic career.

SHEPHARD

While most students were enjoying a three-day weekend over Labor Day, a group of 10 Statler College students accomplished the extraordinary— successfully navigating their robot, Cataglyphis, to amass 11 points to win the Level 2 competition for the Sample Robot Return Challenge as part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, bringing home a $750,000 prize, the largest NASA has awarded in the five-year history of the Challenge. They are the only team to ever win Level 2, a feat they achieved for two consecutive years. Despite being threatened with closure due to budget cuts, the state’s Green Bank Observatory will be put to good use by computer science and electrical engineering faculty members Natalia Schmid and Kevin Bandura. The pair were awarded a grant of $577,815 from the NSF that will allow them to team with the WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology to create a research experience for teachers. The program—Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy—will provide high school teachers with hands-on experience using high-quality, open source software development tools, in both research engineering and educational settings.

NRAO/AUI

2016

RIO OLYMPICS

FALL SEMESTER

For the third straight year, the College was ranked in the top 25 of all engineering schools in the country for offering the best value for the money for undergraduate degree programs in engineering according to rankings released by College Factual, an online guide to the college selection process. The College’s undergraduate and graduate programs received renewed accreditation from ABET, the global accreditor of engineering programs.

Finding ways to keep miners safe continues to be at the forefront of research being conducted in the Statler College. The most recent award—$1.2 million from the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health—will allow Brijes Mishra (mining engineering) and Edward Sabolsky (mechanical and aerospace engineering) to study the fundamental mechanisms behind roof falls in coal mines, which have accounted for more than 450 injuries over the past three years. The NSF awarded the College’s Academy of Engineering Success program nearly $955,000 to provide five-year merit scholarships to underrepresented groups in an effort to get them more engaged in STEM fields. The program was established in 2012 as a way to help freshmen who are at-risk academically develop a set of skills that will help them succeed in the College’s engineering programs.

SPRING

SEMESTER

2017

Officials from WVU and a delegation from China Shenhua Energy Company created a partnership focused on the development of clean energy technologies. The partnership will promote collaboration on technology innovation, education and training exchanges, and joint energy business development. WVU’s Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute launched a national search for six scientists to form the backbone of a new push into quantitative neuroscience—an interdisciplinary approach to studying how the nervous system processes information within the human brain. Two of the scientists will be faculty members in the Statler College.

Oscars are usually given out in February. But in November, the R&D 100 Award, known as the “Oscar of Innovation,” was awarded to Debangsu Bhattacharyya (chemical and biomedical engineering) and David Mebane (mechanical and aerospace engineering) as part of the Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative. Organized by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, the CCSI Toolset consists of a suite of computational tools and models to accelerate the development of carbon-capture technology for manufacturers and businesses. This is the third R&D 100 Award won by researchers in the Statler College.

You would think after winning one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Cataglyphis would get some downtime. Not the kind of robot to rest on its laurels, it’s being turned into a precision pollination robot. Led by mechanical and aerospace engineering Associate Professor Yu Gu, a team of researchers from WVU will attempt to turn it into a precision pollination robot. The three-year study is being funded by a more than $700,000 grant for the first two years from the National Robotics Initiative, a multiagency effort that includes the National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense.

It’s not often you can surprise Statler College Dean Gene Cilento, but that’s exactly what long-time supporters Glen and Ann Hiner did when they donated a gift of $225,000 to name the Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources’ Freshman Engineering Learning Center in his honor. Cilento serves as the Glen H. Hiner Dean of the College. Each year less than one-tenth of one percent of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 400,000 members worldwide are honored as Fellows. In 2016, two computer science and electrical engineering professors—Powsiri Klinkhachorn and Xin Li—were selected. IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization whose mission is to encourage its members to revolutionize technology for the benefit of humanity. Businesses are always looking for ways to do more with less, especially when it comes to things like energy and water use. WVU’s Industrial Assessment Center, led by Bhaskaran Gopalakrishnan, received a more-than $1.5 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy to assess small and medium-sized enterprises to find ways to be more efficient, productive and sustainable. The assessments will focus on waste reduction,

opportunities for smart manufacturing and potential enhancements to cyber security in addition to energy efficiency and water conservation.

A proposal submitted by the Statler College’s Amateur Radio Club, the student chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Student Partnership for the Advancement of Cosmic Exploration was one of only 11 selected to advance to the next stage of the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station or ARISS program. ARISS allows students worldwide to experience the excitement of talking with crew members on the ISS in hopes of inspiring them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. To date there has been very limited data on methane emissions from natural gasfueled vehicles. A study of methane emissions from heavy-duty natural gaspowered vehicles and refueling stations by scientists at WVU’s Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines and Emissions, published by Environmental Science & Technology, was the first end-use paper in a collaborative scientific research series designed to measure and better understand the sources and amount of greenhouse-gas methane that is emitted across the natural gas supply chain. It’s not often that a program vaults from 30th to 10th in a U.S. News & World Report ranking but that’s exactly what the College’s online graduate program in software engineering did in the publication’s Best Online Program Rankings. The program began in 1997 and has graduated more than 350 students.

s t a t l e r. w v u . e d u

Civil engineering professor Karl Barth and WVU alumnus and Marshall University professor Greg Michaelson teamed up to create a cost-effective bridge construction system for short-span steel bridges. The duo, working in conjunction with the Short Span Steel Bridge Alliance, introduced a new type of tub girder that requires less fabrication and installation time than conventional bridge systems. According to the SSSBA, the system offers as much as a 50 percent reduction in fabrication costs, compared to proprietary cold-formed box-girder systems.

2016-2017 Year in Review Spring Semester 2017

There is nothing more aggravating to travelers than to be sitting in a terminal waiting for a crew to arrive to fly their plane. Unless you count airlines scrambling to find a replacement plane when another experiences technical or maintenance issues. Working with a team of students, Pete Gall (mechanical and aerospace engineering) may have come up with a solution. Dubbed the Gall Hybrid Methodology, the sophisticated mathematical model allowed American Airlines to integrate the flight operations of three major airlines (American, USAirways and American West Airlines), more than 15,000 pilots and nearly 1,000 jet aircraft. The team spent months looking at the age, date of hire, the plane the pilot was currently flying, the seat the pilot was holding and any periods of furlough that may have occurred during the pilot’s career. Each pilot was given a longevity, status and category score, which required layers of complex calculations. These calculations dictated their place on the seniority list.

At the urging of two students—civil engineering major Morgan King and exercise physiology major Savannah Lusk—the College dedicated the Katherine Johnson Conference Room, named in honor of the central figure in book and film, Hidden Figures. The West Virginia native worked as a “computer” for NASA, where she computed the launch window for astronaut Alan Shepard’s 1961 Mercury mission and verified the machine computing calculations used for John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth. If freshman William Keefe from Collegeville, Pennsylvania, has his way his app, Band Books, could become a must-have for concertgoers. Keefe won first place in the Entrepreneur Pitch Contest hosted by WVU’s LaunchLab. The app will be used to connect bands, venues and fans in one digital platform.

WVU alumni, faculty and staff can be loyal to a fault and in the case of the College’s new Career Closet they are even willing to give students the shirts off their back. The closet, a first at WVU, allows engineering students to obtain and keep business attire free of charge.

FALL 2017

Thorsten Wuest (industrial and management systems engineering) and Saiph Savage (computer science and electrical engineering) were named the inaugural J. Wayne and Kathy Richards Faculty Fellows in Engineering. The three-

year fellowships provide funds to support and grow their respective research programs.

More than 100 alumni and friends of the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering returned to campus to celebrate the 100th anniversary of chemical engineering at WVU. Founded in 1916-17, the program has grown from being one that taught students to design, build and manage manufacturing plants to one that now includes biomedical engineering and a focus on biotechnology, energy and materials.

As more and more companies work to create self-driving cars, people can’t help but wonder how smart these vehicles really are. Funded by a two-year grant from the NSF, Victor Fragoso (computer science and electrical engineering) is studying the confidence of the car’s computers. He is investigating ways in which the computer can reason about the different objects it detects and its confidence in accurately recognizing those objects. The proposed confidence measures can alert about wrong identifications, and can help the car trigger other mechanisms to avoid localization errors on-the-fly. 2017 started out big for Statler Chair in Engineering John Hu and Hanjing Tian (chemical and biomedical engineering). First, the duo joined the newest branch of the DOE’s National Network of Manufacturing Institutes. The

Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment institute, or RAPID, will focus on using advanced manufacturing to develop breakthrough technologies to boost the productivity and efficiency of some of industrial processes by 20 percent in the next five years. They also received $1.25 million from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, known as ARPA-E. The award will be used to develop technologies for converting electrical energy from renewable resources into energy-dense carbonneutral liquid fuels—that is, fuels that do not increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The WVU Reed College of Media, in collaboration with computer science students and faculty at the Statler College, hosted an artificial intelligence course at its Media Innovation Center that included two projects focused on using AI to detect and combat fake news articles. Students in the senior-level computer science elective course worked in teams to develop and implement their own AI programs.

For the second straight year, a team from WVU captured first place in the steel bridge competition at the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Virginias Conference. The bridge design had to be able to withstand 2,500 pounds of weight. The pieces of the bridge were all three feet or smaller in length and constructed with slide connections for increased speed. The team was able to assemble their bridge in just 12.5 minutes, 16 minutes faster than the second-place team.

The College’s Experimental Rocketry team captured first place in the 10,000-foot launch category at the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition during the Spaceport America Cup. The sixmember team crafted a 12-foot long fiberglass rocket—emblazoned with the words “Wild and Wonderful”— that soared to an altitude of more than 9,600 feet while carrying nearly nine pounds of payload.

Civil engineering professor Hota GangaRao and doctoral student Praveen Majjigapu debuted a system that will increase the strength and endurance of structures in earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other large blasts, helping communities prevent catastrophe. The system is also beneficial for repairing historic or aging structures. The three-piece system consisting of filler modules—wedge-like parts made to certain specifications—reinforcing dowels and composite materials allows buildings and bridges to resist heavier loads, and provides a significant amount of shock absorption as well as moisture and fire resistance. Nianqiang “Nick” Wu, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The designation is given to individuals who have made outstanding contributions to chemistry. As of 2016, only 108 scientists have earned this designation. A 10-student team from the Statler College placed in two categories at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Human Powered Vehicle Challenge. The team placed fourth in the innovation challenge due to its innovative health monitoring system and 11th overall against teams from around the world. Chemical engineering alumnus Verl Purdy and his wife, Sandra, were recipients of the WVU Foundation’s 2017 Outstanding Philanthropy award. A past president and current member of the WVU Foundation Board of Directors, Purdy serves as co-chairman of the Foundation’s highly successful “State of Minds” fundraising campaign.

As the only school with two teams in the competition, WVU turned out to have the golden touch, with Team MIDAS—Mountaineer Ice Drilling Automated System— capturing top honors in the firstever NASA’s Mars Ice Challenge. Led by graduate student Eric Loy and advisor Powsiri Klinkhachorn, MIDAS bested teams from Colorado School of Mines, University of TexasAustin and University of Pennsylvania and finished first in both the most water collected and the cleanest water categories. The College’s second entry in the competition, the In-Situ Resource Extraction System team, was advised by Thomas Evans (mechanical and aerospace engineering).

With one year left to go in the fouryear EcoCAR 3 competition, the team from WVU placed fourth overall, up three spots from last year, and won first place in the AVL DRIVE Quality Event. The team also placed fourth in project management with team project manager Howard Bugg winning the Spirit of Project Management Award and Reed College student Caitlin Worrell placing third for Best Communications Program. The team brought home more than $8,000 in prize money and joined Ohio State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Georgia Tech at the top.

s t a t l e r. w v u . e d u

For the seventh straight year a faculty member in the Statler College has been selected to receive a prestigious CAREER award from NSF. Fernando Lima, assistant professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, earned the award for his work to improve modular systems for energy applications. The award came with $500,000 in funding over a five-year period.

Spring semester is prime awards season and as usual faculty and staff in the Statler College cleaned up. Michelle Poland, academic success program coordinator in the Fundamentals of Engineering Program, was one of four outstanding student advisors to be honored with the 2017 Nicholas Evans Excellence in Advising Award. David Martinelli (civil and environmental engineering), Dave Solley (mechanical engineering), Nianqiang “Nick” Wu (mechanical and aerospace engineering) and Yanfang “Fanny” Ye (computer science and electrical engineering) were honored for outstanding teaching, advising and research, respectively, at the College’s annual Honors Ceremony. Anna Gilpin and Jared Beard were the 43rd and 44th students at WVU to win the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship. Gilpin, the second-straight biomedical engineering student to win the award, conducts research in the area of regenerative medicine, while Beard conducts research in materials. David Graham (computer science and electrical engineering) and Lizzie Santiago (Fundamental of Engineering) were selected for the 2017 Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching, which honors exceptional professors who go above and beyond to inspire their students.

2016-2017 Year in Numbers

ENROLLMENT UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

GRADUATE STUDENTS

AEROSPACE

ELECTRICAL

AEROSPACE

INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE

BIOMEDICAL

INDUSTRIAL

CHEMICAL

MATERIAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

BIOMETRIC SYSTEMS

MECHANICAL

CIVIL

MINING

COMPUTER ENGINEERING

310 73

CHEMICAL

190 CIVIL

393 52

NON-DECLARED MAJORS

1,531

COMPUTER ENGINEERING

PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS

COMPUTER SCIENCE

186

TOTAL 3,948

FALL 2017

329

271 102

112

347

35 52

62 56

MECHANICAL

MINING

COMPUTER SCIENCE

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH

ELECTRICAL

PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS

81 97

ENERGY SYSTEMS

INDUSTRIAL

141

TOTAL 756

COLLEGE TOTAL 4,704

SAFETY MANAGEMENT

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

RESEARCH EXPENDITURES BY SOURCE OTHER:

$1,032,673.25 STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA:

$1,617,347.11

$19,182,240.97 MILLION

NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND PRIVATE DONORS:

in externally funded research

$5,256,321.49

CAMPAIGN

PROGRESSION ACHIEVEMENT

$167,473,430

GOAL

$186,000,000 ACCOMPLISHED

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT:

90% SUCCESS

$11,275,899.12

BY DEPARTMENT FUNDAMENTALS OF ENGINEERING

$39,961.25

PETROLEUM AND NATURAL GAS

FISCAL YEAR PRODUCTION

$195,596.52

ADMINISTRATION

$252,095.32

$7,142,479.12

MINING

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

$3,095,931.66

$610,543.00

$19,182,240.97 MILLION in externally funded research

CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

$2,869,759.17

CHEMICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

$2,293,375.68

MINING AND INDUSTRIAL EXTENSION

$723,244.89

INDUSTRIAL AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

$1,959,254.36

ACHIEVEMENT

$8,272,666

GOAL $7,500,000

ACCOMPLISHED

110% SUCCESS

s t a t l e r. w v u . e d u

MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING

Year in Review

Honor Roll of Donors

We would like to thank our benefactors who have generously contributed to the College. We are grateful for your support; we could not accomplish what we do without your help. Listed below are individuals and organizations who contributed to a program or department in our College from July 1, 2016, through June 30, 2017.

Individuals $100,000 and Up Dr. & Mrs. Glen H. Hiner Mrs. Merrilyn M. Lemons Mr. & Mrs. Charles E. Meredith II Dr. & Mrs. Paul G. Migliore Mr. & Mrs. Verl O. Purdy Mr. & Mrs. J. Wayne Richards Mr. & Mrs. Richard J. Rossy Mr. & Mrs. Maurice A. Wadsworth Mr. & Mrs. Royce J. Watts

$25,000 to $99,999 Mr. & Mrs. Bart A. Aitken Dr. & Mrs. James P. Anderson Mr. Mark Campbell Dr. Eugene V. Cilento Mr. Forrest D. L. Coontz Mr. & Mrs. Michael E. Ellis Mr. & Mrs. David L. Hawkins Ms. Sheridan T. Holstein Mr. & Mrs. Mark V. Leidecker Ms. Mary E. McGivern & Mr. Bill Jones Ms. Loretta C. Stewart Mrs. Joy M. Teske Mr. Henry W. Thrasher Mr. & Mrs. Royce J. Watts II Mr. & Mrs. Darrell W. Williams

FALL 2017

$10,000 to $24,999

Mr. & Mrs. Gregory S. Babe Dr. & Mrs. David W. Baker Mr. & Mrs. George E. Booth, Sr. Mr. James O. Bunn, Sr. Mr. & Mrs. James N. Butch Dr. & Mrs. Jack Byrd Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Corsi, Jr. Ms. Livio D. DeSimone Mr. & Mrs. Edward J. DiPaolo Dr. & Mrs. William L. Fourney

Mr. & Mrs. G. Thomas Harrick Ms. Philomena Krosmico Mr. C. Douglas Miller Mr. & Mrs. Shalin M. Shah Mrs. Rebecca M. Vest Mrs. Hilda R. Warner

$5,000 to $9,999 Mr. & Mrs. Chester L. Allen Mr. & Mrs. C. Ben Arney Mr. & Mrs. Thomas C. Burlas Mr. & Mrs. Frank Cerminara Dr. & Mrs. Raymond W. Chafin II Mrs. Debbie Davis-Waltermire Mrs. Karen L. Goodman Ms. Devon L. Gosnell Mr. & Mrs. Dean W. Harvey Mr. & Mrs. James W. Harvey Mr. & Mrs. Paul Hornor Mr. & Mrs. Elmo J. Hurst Dr. & Mrs. Samuel J. Kasley Mr. Calvin Kidd Mr. & Mrs. Floyd E. Leaseburg II Mr. Karl G. Morey Mr. & Mrs. Robert O. Orders, Jr. Ms. Rhonda L. Radcliff & Mr. Robert Mullenger Mr. John P. Smith Dr. & Mrs. John E. Sneckenberger

$1,000 to $4,999 Dr. & Mrs. M. Dayne Aldridge Mr. Larry J. Argiro, Sr. Dr. Steven R. Auvil & Mrs. Jane Auvil Mrs. Rita A. Bajura Dr. Richard H. Barnard Mr. & Mrs. Robert C. Basinger, Jr. Mr. James L. Bero

Mr. & Mrs. W. Douglas Blackburn, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Raymond A. Bradbury Mr. Christopher H. Braden Mr. & Mrs. Francis S. Brezny Mr. Paul D. Browning Mr. John W. Campbell Ms. Anesa T. Chaibi Mrs. Lenore McComas Coberly Mr. & Mrs. Bernard C. Corker Mrs. Cindy H. Currey Dr. Kenneth R. Currie Ms. Molly Cutler Mr. & Mrs. Ralph Dado Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth Dalton Dr. & Mrs. J. Reginald Dietz Mr. Glen Dodson Mr. & Mrs. Robert C. Doeffinger, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Joseph F. Dunn Dr. & Mrs. Liang S. Fan Mr. Barton R. Field Mr. Walter J. Fitzgerald Mr. & Mrs. Charles J. Fleischer Mr. & Mrs. Michael D. Flowers Rev. James E. Galford & Mrs. Sheila L. Galford Dr. Peter D. Gall Mr. & Mrs. Walter R. Haddad Mr. & Mrs. James B. Haines Mr. & Mrs. Donal Hall Mr. & Mrs. Benjamin A. Hardesty Mr. Daniel L. Harman & Mrs. Diane M. Harman Dr. William M. Hart Mr. & Mrs. Masood Hassan Mr. & Mrs. Richard D. Haynes Mr. Scott Henson Mr. & Mrs. Earl K. Hess, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. James R. Hess, Jr.

Mr. Patrick A. Jackson & Mrs. Dayna L. Doricich Mrs. D. Joan Jones Dr. & Mrs. Edwin C. Jones, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Jimmie L. Justice Mr. Richard J. Kacik Mr. & Mrs. Bob Keith Dr. & Mrs. William F. Kellermeyer, Jr. Mr. Pravin M. Khandare Mrs. Eleanor W. Laughlin Dr. Kwangsoon Lee Mr. & Mrs. Kristopher C. Lilly Mr. & Mrs. Larry J. Lilly Dr. & Mrs. John Loth Mr. Michael E. Lukey Mr. & Mrs. Porter A. Lyon Mr. & Mrs. Daniel L. Manack Mr. & Mrs. Michael J. Matheny Mr. & Mrs. William D. McClung, Jr. Mr. Edgar R. McHenry Mr. & Mrs. Walter G. McKinney Dr. & Mrs. James E. Mitchell Mr. Thomas L. Moore II Mr. & Mrs. Alan P. Moran Mr. & Mrs. Thomas J. Mullett Mr. & Mrs. Gregory S. Nailler Mr. & Mrs. Charles B. Palmer Mr. & Mrs. Marion Parsons, Jr. Mr. Timothy P. Pawlak Mr. & Mrs. Edward L. Perry Mr. Jozef M. Petrak Mr. & Mrs. John T. Poffenbarger Mr. & Mrs. William R. Powell Mr. & Mrs. Alan S. Pyle Mr. & Mrs. Joseph S. Robertson Mr. Andrew T. Rock & Dr. Darlene S. Schuster Mr. Richard C. Rockenstein

Dr. & Mrs. Ziad A. Sabra Mr. Raman Santra Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Satterfield Mr. & Mrs. Walter J. Scheller III Mr. W. David Shinn Mr. & Mrs. Barrett L. Shrout Mr. Paul J. Smith & Ms. Alexia Kniska Mr. & Mrs. Richard N. Smith Mr. Peter L. Spence Mr. Phillip L. Stalnaker Mr. Joseph J. Stark, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Jeffrey R. Stevens Mr. & Mrs. Vincent J. Stricker Mr. Larry D. Taylor & Dr. Lydotta M. Taylor Dr. & Mrs. Curtis J. Tompkins Mr. & Mrs. Steven E. Trail Dr. Matthew C. Valenti & Ms. Kristin G. Steinhardt Mr. & Mrs. Robert W. Walter Mr. Chester L. Whitehair Mr. & Mrs. Richard M. Whiting Mr. Jeffrey A. Wilson Mr. & Mrs. D. Alan Wise Prof. & Mrs. Brian D. Woerner Ms. Jane Yohe-Cooley Mr. & Mrs. Eugene M. Zvolensky, Sr.

$500 to $999 Mr. George C. Alex Mr. & Mrs. Joseph A. Alvarez Mr. & Mrs. Mark K. Angelelli PE Mr. Ramanna P. Avancha Mrs. Belle G. Barrett Mr. & Mrs. James A. Beach PE Maj. Gen. Donald W. Bennett USAF (Ret) Mr. & Mrs. Dennis E. Bibbee Mr. Joseph M. Brown

Mr. & Mrs. Frank W. Schneider Mr. Kenneth K. Sitar Dr. Jason R. Smith Ms. Jennifer L. Smith Dr. James B. Stenger Mr. & Mrs. John A. Strohmeyer LTC Kevin D. Swisher & Dr. Anne K. Swisher Mr. Samuel C. Talbott Mr. Robert O. Thoman Mr. Robert R. Tincher Mr. & Mrs. Robert K. Tinney Mr. & Mrs. William D. Walko Dr. Richard E. Walters PhD Dr. Yajie Wang Dr. Karen E. Warden Ms. Janie West & Mr. David A. Rose Mr. & Mrs. Paul J. Wielgus Mr. Kurt Wimmer Mr. Suyoun Won Mr. & Mrs. William F. Woodburn Mr. & Mrs. David A. Young, Jr. Dr. Ann S. Zirkle Dr. John W. Zondlo & Ms. Rena L. Bouchal

$250 to $499 Mr. James V. Alford II Mr. & Mrs. Richard G. Almes Mr. & Mrs. Edward C. Anderson Mr. & Mrs. Tony A. Angelelli Dr. & Mrs. Frank T. Baker Mr. & Mrs. Steven C. Ball Mr. Theodore C. Barker Mr. & Mrs. Mark S. Boggs Mr. J. Sloan Bonar Mr. William E. Bowling Mr. Wallace M. Cackowski Mr. Jaime Carbajal Mr. Salvatore J. Cilento Mr. & Mrs. Richard E. Cline Mr. Austin J. Cook Mr. Charlie L. Cornett Mr. & Mrs. Jeffrey M. Cutright Dr. Matthew D. Doerr Ms. Beth A. Drylie Mr. Samuel T. Dusi Mrs. Catharine E. Everitt Mr. George B. Flegal, Jr. Mr. Timothy K. Fleming Judge & Mrs. Edwin F. Flowers Mr. Fredrick Gates Dr. & Mrs. Kenneth W. Goff Mr. & Mrs. William R. Gray, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Lewis G. Grimm PE

Mr. & Mrs. Nazih M. Hage Mr. & Mrs. Scott A. Hair Mr. William F. Haley Mrs. Choo-Yieng Hamilton Dr. Naveed U. Haque Maj. Gerhard B. Hartig Mr. Michael E. Hershberger Mr. & Mrs. Thomas A. Hill Mr. George Hirst Mr. & Mrs. Keith D. Horton Mr. & Mrs. Brian D. Inman Mr. Paul Kerlin Dr. Lesley Ann Klishis & Dr. Michael J. Klishis Mr. Andrew B. Leimer Mr. & Mrs. Joseph P. Lester Mr. Paul J. Lewis PE Ms. Catherine A. Loikith Mr. Wesley E. Lovell Mr. & Mrs. Joseph S. Luchini Mr. & Mrs. Bryce L. Maddox Ms. Sara S. Mahood Mr. & Mrs. Joseph A. Marcinek, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Peter M. Martin Mr. & Mrs. S. Fenton McDonald Dr. Ronald B. McPherson PhD Dr. Carol D. Means CDR J. Larry Miles, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Joseph R. Mitchell Mr. Stephen R. Montagna Mr. Terence J. Nypaver Mr. David A. Price Mr. Bradley R. Reed Dr. Leroy C. Reid, Jr. Mr. John A. Reynolds Ms. Melisa L. Ridenour Mrs. Annette S. Riekel Mr. & Mrs. James W. Schumacher Mr. & Mrs. Gary J. Schweitzer Mr. William D. Seaman Dr. Carolyn C. Seepersad & Mr. Clyde Seepersad Mr. David W. Shaffer Mr. Charles A. Shaver Mr. & Mrs. Morris M. Shor Dr. & Mrs. James E. Spearman Mrs. Marcella P. Steerman Mr. & Mrs. Richard H. Stelle Dr. Richard J. Stock Mr. & Mrs. William H. Stroup Mr. & Mrs. Thomas E. Tallman PE Mr. & Mrs. Charles E. Tupes Mr. Jay J. Turner PE Mr. Kelles L. Veneri Mr. & Mrs. Edward A. Ward Mr. George A. Waters

Mr. Daniel A. Weber Mr. Norman W. L. White Mr. & Mrs. Thomas H. White Mr. & Mrs. Robert C. Whiteman Mr. J. Eldon Williams Mr. & Mrs. Christopher J. Williamson Dr. & Mrs. James D. Wilson Dr. & Mrs. John S. Wilson Dr. Chaojin Xu Mr. Richard Yungwirth Mr. Hao Zhang Mr. & Mrs. George T. Zimmerman PE

$100 to $249 Mr. Jay J. Allen & Dr. Anna M. Allen Mr. Randy L. Allison Mr. & Mrs. Andrew M. Altman Mr. Brian C. Andrews Mrs. Colleen D. Andrews Mr. Jeffrey L. Andrews Mr. & Mrs. Larry J. Andrews Ms. Swetha Anegunta Mr. Edward J. Bailey Mr. & Mrs. Tracy A. Baker PE Mr. Narayan Balachandran Mr. Charles R. Bartlett Mr. & Mrs. Christopher R. Bearce Lt. Col. (Ret) & Mrs. Paul G. Bellia Mrs. Terry L. Benson Mr. & Mrs. Duane T. Bernard Mr. David A. Bernemann Mr. Bradley H. Berry Mr. Arun Bhat Mr. Christopher A. Bias Mr. & Mrs. Stephen M. Billcheck, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. David P. Billings Dr. & Mrs. G. Lansing Blackshaw Mr. & Mrs. John L. Blair, Jr. Mrs. Irene F. Bohuslavsky Mr. & Mrs. Kevin J. Booe Mr. & Mrs. Norman J. Bosetti Mr. Alexander M. Botten Mr. & Mrs. John W. Botts Mr. & Mrs. Richard C. Bourne Mr. John W. Boyle Mr. Arthur M. Bree Mr. Michael E. Brennan Mr. Robert J. Broughton Mr. & Mrs. Robert L. Brown Mr. Kurt A. Brungard PE Mr. Gary Bryant Mr. & Mrs. James L. Cagey Mr. Gregory T. Cammerata

Mr. & Mrs. Overton H. Caperton Mr. Michael J. Carter Mr. Thomas A. Caserta Mr. & Mrs. Michael A. Castle Mr. & Mrs. William C. Cavage Mr. & Mrs. Ryan D. Cavallo Dr. William R. Cawthorne & Mrs. Jennifer L. Cawthorne Mr. Anthony J. Cenedella Mr. & Mrs. Harold W. Chambers Mrs. Diana M. Charletta Mr. Edward J. Chehovin Mr. David C. Chirdon Dr. Hsi F. Chou Dr. David A. Cicci Mr. Joseph P. Cinalli, Jr. Mr. Steven B. Clagett Mr. Kenneth J. Claudio Mr. Robert A. Clise Mr. August D. Coby Mr. & Mrs. James W. Coffman Mr. A. Michael Collins Mr. Charles W. Collins Mr. Patrick M. Collins Mrs. Margaret L. Corder Mr. & Mrs. Russell V. Costanza Mr. & Mrs. Mark W. Cottrill CPA Ms. Melanie J. Cowfer Mr. Bruce A. Cox Mr. & Mrs. Timothy N. Cox Mrs. Jennifer E. Crawford & Mr. Jared A. Crawford Mr. & Mrs. William Crise Mr. Gaylord Cumberledge Mr. Andrew W. Cummings Ms. Melanie Cunningham Mr. & Mrs. Gene P. Current Mr. & Mrs. Leon J. Daciek Mr. & Mrs. Joshuah W. Dalton Dr. & Mrs. Earl Z. Damewood Mr. Dean R. Davidson Ms. Dianne C. Davidson Dr. Paul C. Davis Mr. & Mrs. Christopher F. Dean Mr. & Mrs. Dale T. Deem Dr. & Mrs. Daniel E. DellaGiustina Mr. Mark D. Dettori Mrs. Kathleen M. Devlin Mr. & Mrs. Randall K. Drazba Mr. Keith S. Dugan Mr. Steven E. Easley Mr. & Mrs. Ralph G. Eberly, Jr. Dr. John R. Etherton Mr. Richard L. Falkenstein Mr. & Mrs. Joseph F. Fanto Mr. & Mrs. John R. Farina

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Mr. Kenneth E. Brown Mr. & Mrs. Ross D. Brown, Jr. Mr. Gary D. Burkett Mr. Joseph A. Bush, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Jeffrey S. Coe Mr. David W. Coffman Dr. & Mrs. Paul J. Componation Mr. David F. Cooper & Mrs. Linda L. Cooper Mr. & Mrs. John P. Creamer III Mr. Kellen A. Davis Mr. & Mrs. Ronald F. Davoli Mr. Victor W. Dean Dr. & Mrs. John P. Dever Mr. & Mrs. Michael L. Dever Mr. Gilbert W. DeVine Mr. & Mrs. Thomas J. DeWitt Ms. Mary C. Dillon Mr. & Mrs. Dale W. Dodrill Mr. Robert E. Ellis Dr. Karen M. Fanucci Mr. Harold G. Fisher Mr. Christopher A. Flanagan Mr. Richard E. Fletcher Mr. & Mrs. Alexander H. Ghiz, Jr. Mr. David R. Glass Mr. & Mrs. Thomas A. Gribschaw Dr. & Mrs. Robert T. Hansen Mr. & Mrs. John S. Hill Dr. & Mrs. Nicholas Hollingshad Mr. & Mrs. David A. Horvath Mr. Christopher K. Jackson Mr. James M. Jarrell Mr. Marcus A. Jordan Mrs. Toni J. Kerns Mr. & Mrs. Junior H. Landes II Mrs. Millicent N. Mason Mr. & Mrs. Arthur M. McClain Mr. & Mrs. William S. Mease Capt. Charles Melcher Mr. & Mrs. James C. Miller Mr. & Mrs. Mack T. Moore Mr. & Mrs. Gary A. Murdock LTC & Mrs. Dale A. Olson Mr. & Mrs. Raman L. Patel Drs. Peter L. & Cheryl L. Perrotta Mr. & Mrs. Charles H. Perry, Jr. Dr. & Mrs. Ralph W. Plummer Dr. & Mrs. J. Mark Pullen Mr. James B. Reese Mr. Anthony D. Rossetti Col. & Mrs. R. Michael Ruppert Mr. & Mrs. James J. Rusenko Dr. Simsek Sarikelle

FALL 2017

Year in Review

Mr. & Mrs. John E. Farmer, Sr. Mr. Wilbert Fields III Mr. & Mrs. William G. Fields Mr. & Mrs. John P. Figurski Mr. & Mrs. Earl M. Fisher Mr. & Mrs. John A. Fleek Mr. & Mrs. J. Roger Floyd Mr. Anthony H. Folk Mr. Zane Foster Mr. & Mrs. B. Kenneth Fouts Mr. Gerard T. Frusci, Jr. Mr. Jingang Fu Mr. Larry D. Garner Mr. Michael J. Garska Mr. & Mrs. John P. Gay Mr. Bob Gelety Mrs. Laura E. Gergen Ms. Sheree L. Gibson Mr. & Mrs. David J. Gingerich Mr. Frank D. Gmeindl Mr. & Mrs. John M. Goldie Mr. & Mrs. Roger L. Goodwin Dr. & Mrs. Leonard E. Graham Mr. & Mrs. John H. Graybill Mr. & Mrs. Garret W. Green Mr. Richard A. Gregg & Mrs. Jeannette M. Gregg Mr. Christopher S. Guinn Mr. & Mrs. Frank L. Guthrie, Jr. Mrs. Jamie L. Gutmann Mr. Ronald A. Hahn Dr. & Mrs. George A. Hall Mr. & Mrs. Kevin B. Hall Mr. Robert L. Halstead Mrs. Rachel N. Handel Mr. & Mrs. Samuel R. Harman Mr. & Mrs. Gregory S. Harness Mr. & Mrs. James E. Harris Mr. & Mrs. Donald L. Harrison Mr. Richard F. Hashinger Mr. & Mrs. William R. Heathcote Mr. William D. Hegener Mr. & Mrs. Roy A. Heidelbach Mr. Patrick J. Henry Mr. Christopher L. Herbert Mr. & Mrs. James W. Hess Mr. & Mrs. David K. Hollen Prof. & Mrs. Christopher V. Hollot Mr. & Mrs. Ching Y. Hui Mr. Hugh B. Humbert, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Wayne K. Hunter Mr. & Mrs. Munther T. Jabbur Mr. Kiran K. Jain MBA Mr. Ramesh B. V. S. Jaladi

Mr. John B. James Mr. & Mrs. C. Duane Jamison Dr. & Mrs. Donald W. Jarrell Mr. Brian E. Johnson Dr. Charles R. Judy Dr. Omkar Karthikeyan Mr. Charles F. Kazienko Dr. James A. Keenan Mr. & Mrs. Dennis E. Keohane Ms. Alice L. Kerns Mr. Scott A. Kesling Mr. Joe D. Kirby Mr. James H. Kirwin Mr. John J. Klim III Mr. Andrew R. Knapp Mr. & Mrs. Eugene F. Kopyar Ms. Beth Kosar Dr. & Mrs. John M. Kuhlman Dr. Ravi Kumar Mr. Nitin N. Kumbhani Mrs. Vicki R. Kurrle Mr. Frank E. Lanham Mr. & Mrs. Robert A. Leitch Mr. & Mrs. Stephen C. Lewis Mr. James E. Leyh Mrs. Barbara Lilly Mr. & Mrs. David R. Linger Mr. Michael S. Linger Mr. & Mrs. Douglas A. Long Mr. & Mrs. Kumar Mahesh Mrs. Rose Ann Maloy Capt. Luke A. Mansfield Mr. & Mrs. Dennis J. Mantlick Mr. & Mrs. Steven R. Marcus Mr. Daniel J. Marinacci Ms. Nancy H. Marsh Drs. Diana L. & David R. Martinelli Mr. & Mrs. Charles B. Marushi Mrs. Christine S. Mayernik Dr. Amber M. C. Mayfield & Mr. Jeremy L. Mayfield Mr. Richard E. McAllister Mr. Stephen P. McBride Mrs. Margaret McCartney Mr. & Mrs. George P. McCarty Mr. Jacob D. McCarty Mr. Richard L. McDonald Mr. & Mrs. James R. McGreevy, Jr. Mr. Mark L. McNeer Mr. & Mrs. David L. McQuaid Ms. Marcie McSwane Mrs. Rebecca Z. Meacham Mr. Ryan Merriam Ms. Elizabeth Merricks Mr. & Mrs. Neal H. Merrifield Mr. & Mrs. Carl W. Miller II

Mr. Eric S. Miller Mr. Jonathan L. Miller Mr. Robert C. Miller Paul & Jacqueline Mills Mrs. Michelle Mital Dr. Chinnarao Mokkapati Mr. William D. Monaghan Mr. & Mrs. Guy E. Mongold, Jr. Mr. Raymond A. Montgomery, Jr. Mr. Robert F. Montgomery Mr. David P. Moon Mr. David B. Morgan Dr. & Mrs. James J. Morgan Mr. Mark E. Morris Mr. Cleveland G. Mosby, Jr. Ms. Jennifer E. Mosser Mr. & Mrs. Randy L. Moulton Mr. & Mrs. T. David Musgrove Dr. & Mrs. Warren R. Myers Mr. & Mrs. Richard S. Napier Mr. & Mrs. Randy A. Nicholson Dr. & Mrs. Roy S. Nutter, Jr. Dr. Robert Ochsendorf Mrs. Margarette E Offutt Mr. Larry E. Oliver Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. Ott Mr. Ademola A. Oyerokun Mr. & Mrs. Terrence L. Parsons Mr. Thomas H. Parsons Mr. & Mrs. Vijendrakumar C. Patel Mr. John D. Pellegrin Mr. Richard B. Pellegrino Mr. Richard J. Perin Mr. & Mrs. Gary A. Person Mr. & Mrs. Andrew D. Pickens, Jr. CDR & Mrs. William P. Pierson Mr. & Mrs. Timothy J. Pizatella Mr. Martin Potts Mr. Timothy J. Poulin Mr. Herbert S. Rawlings Dr. & Mrs. Mark F. Reeder Mr. & Mrs. Joseph E. Reger Mr. & Mrs. John F. Rentschler, Jr. Mr. Boyd W. Rhodes Mr. Herbert L. Ridder Mr. & Mrs. Jon M. Ridgway Mrs. Norma Ridgway Mr. James F. Rinard Mr. Terry D. Rings & Dr. Patricia M. Rings Mr. & Mrs. Carl T. Ripberger III Mr. Ray R. Ritchie

Mike & Margaret Roberts Mr. Brandon N. Robinson Mr. & Mrs. Reed D. Robinson Mr. & Mrs. James P. Robison Ms. Roberta Rossi Mr. & Mrs. Ronald B. Rulon Mr. & Mrs. Hani S. Saad Mr. Phillip M. Sabree Mr. & Mrs. W. Thomas Sanderlin Ms. Lisa Santra Mr. Pinaki Santra Ms. Susan D. Sapula Mrs. Piper S. Sarver Mr. William Satterfield Mr. & Mrs. William A. Savage Mr. Ross E. Schlobohm Mr. Jeremy Schlussel Mr. Arthur K. Schuler Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Scott Mr. Jeffery M. See Mr. & Mrs. Gilbert T. Seese PE Mr. & Mrs. John E. Seknicka Mr. Stan T. Serpento Ms. Jeanette L. Shahan Mr. Israr P. Shaik Mr. & Mrs. Michael T. Shook Mrs. Susan K. Siebken Mr. Tyler M. Sigley Mrs. Susan Falck Silcox Mr. William F. Simmons Mr. & Mrs. Dwain M. Sims Mr. Mark F. Sindelar Dr. & Mrs. Mihir K. Sinha Mr. & Mrs. Thomas W. Sirk, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. George D. Six Mr. Robert D. Skelton Dr. & Mrs. Ojars Skujins Mr. James R. Smith Mr. Shawn A. Smith Mr. & Mrs. Gordon R. Snurr II Mr. Robert K. Snyder CLU Dr. Daoyun Song Mr. & Mrs. John M. Spears Ms. Helen G. Stein Mr. Harry L. Stemple Dr. Larry E. Stewart Mr. John M. Stickler Mr. & Mrs. Lester W. Stone Mr. Charles E. Stricklin Mr. & Mrs. Corey M. Strimer Dr. Terrence R. Stuart Mr. John M. Svedman Mr. & Mrs. David L. Swearingen Mr. Nathan G. Sypolt & Ms. Megan Shoemaker Mr. & Mrs. Caleb A. Tarleton

Mr. Adam M. Tarovisky Mr. George M. Tataseo Col. (Ret) & Mrs. James E. Taylor Mr. Donald B. Teter Mr. David S. Thomas Mrs. Patricia S. Thunborg Mrs. Frances L. Timbers Dr. Douglas L. Timmons Mr. & Mrs. Leonard J. Timms, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Dennis Townsend Mr. James G. Trimmier Mr. & Mrs. Brian A. Truman Mr. & Mrs. Harold Turner Ms. Sherri Turner Mr. & Mrs. Todd J. Urness Mr. Thomas E. Urquhart Mr. & Mrs. Raymond M. Van Camp Mrs. Patricia W. Vetter Mr. Les A. Viegas Mr. & Mrs. Andrew J. R. Vose Mr. William M. Walasinski Mr. Kermit H. Walker, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Robert L. Wallace II Mr. Douglas L. Walton Ms. Jingli Wang Mr. & Mrs. Todd P. Weimer Mrs. Amy H. Wen Mr. & Mrs. William R. Werner Mr. Chad E. Wesson Mr. & Mrs. William H. West Mrs. Wilma Jean Westbrook Mr. Robert W. Whipp & Mrs. Beverly K. Whipp Mr. & Mrs. Glenn L. White Mr. & Mrs. Jason D. Williams Mr. & Mrs. Ronald L. Williams Mr. & Mrs. David D. Wilson Mr. & Mrs. Donald P. Wilson Mr. & Mrs. Richard H. Wilson Mr. & Mrs. Steven F. Wilson Dr. Edward H. Winant PE Mr. & Mrs. Howard V. Withrow II Mr. & Mrs. Marvin C. Woodie, Jr. Mr. & Mrs. Jeffrey T. Woods Mr. & Mrs. Stephen A. Yano Mr. Brandon D. Yaussy Mr. & Mrs. Kurt Zachar Mr. & Mrs. Dennis A. Zalar Mr. J. Michael Zelek Mr. & Mrs. Robert E. Zutaut, Jr.

Corporations, Associations and Trusts

$25,000 to $99,999 EQT Foundation Exxon Mobil Foundation Nason P. Pritchard Trust NORTHCO Corporation Remember The Miners, LLC The Thrasher Group $10,000 to $24,999 AIST Foundation Appalachian Underground Corrosion Short Course Bessemer Trust - C. Douglas and Harriett T. Miller Braskem America Chevron Chevron Products Company Dominion Resources Services Dow Chemical Company Foundation E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company Dr. Charles M. Vest Eagle Research Corporation General Electric Foundation Halliburton Foundation, Inc. Joy M Teske Revocable Trust Leidos, Inc. Pearson Education PPG Industries Shell Oil Company Foundation $5,000 to $9,999 Eaton Corporation Gabriel Brothers, Inc. Gordon Memorial Trust John L. Kirkland Trust Martin Marietta Aggregates North Carolina Coal Institute, Inc. Orbital ATK The Dow Chemical Company WVU Alumni Association Mineral Resources $1,000 to $4,999 AEGIS Foundation American Association of Drilling Engineers American Electric Power

AVL North America Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation CAS Structural Engineering, Inc. Chevron EEI Global FM Global Foundation General Motors Corporation Gimme Foundation, Inc. Grace Foundation, Inc. Gunter Family Charitable Trust Horiba International Corporation Huntsman Intel Corporation Joy Global Inc. Keylogic Systems, Inc. Mar-Bal, Inc. Matheny Motor Truck Company MPLX Nayak Corporation, Inc. Northern WV Section of SPE Peterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Creek Coal Association Pickering Associates Pratt & Whitney Canada Inc. Procter & Gamble Company RF Works Samuel Lawrence Foundation Society of Explosives Engineers Education Foundation $100 to $999 Adams and Cooksey Family Trust Air Products Foundation, Inc. Amgen Foundation Anderson Energy Enterprises Inc. Ansys Inc. Bechtel Matching Gift Program Boeing Aerospace Company Boeing Company Matching Gift Program Book Mart Corp Brown Development Company Buckingham Coal Company Chevron Corporation Matching Grants Program D. L. McQuaid & Associates, Inc. Dominion Energy Charitable Foundation Eaton Corporation Matching Gift Program EBSC Engineering Hampton - Mahood Charitable Fund Harris Foundation Herbert L. Ridder Revocable Trust Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.

InFaith Community Foundation - Frank T. & Mary P. Baker Fund International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers James Louis & Associates, Inc. JoGar Energy & Utility Services, Inc. Johnson Controls Foundation Larry E. Stewart Trust Lockheed Martin Corporation Lockheed Martin Corporation Foundation Loyal Order of the Moose #327 Lubrizol Foundation Matching Gift Program Nationwide Insurance Foundation Nittany Anesthesia, PC Olashuk Environmental, Inc. Pfizer Foundation Matching Gifts Program PPG Industries Foundation Premier, Inc. Qualcomm Raytheon Rizzo Chiropractic SanDisk Corporation Matching Gift Program Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. Siemens US - Matching Contributions Program for Employees Society For Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration, Inc. (SME) The Duke Energy Foundation The Lengyel Family Trust The Millicent N. Mason Rev. Trust Triad Engineering, Inc. Tri-State Electric & Machine Company, Inc. Wilson & Johnson

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$100,000 and Up Delta Electric, Inc. West Virginia Manufacturing Extension Partnership

Year in Review

DID YOU KNOW… The number of alumni who give back to a college plays an important role in an institution’s national rankings, including U.S. News and World Report? The Statler College is evolving and growing in national stature and we need your help. Your support will help us to fund student projects and faculty development, achieve our educational goals and continue to rise in national rankings. Please give to the department or program that best matches your interests.

give.wvu.edu/statler

FALL 2017

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON HOW YOUR GIFT CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

CONTACT: SHAMS KHAN Assistant Dean for Development 304.293.4036 | shams.khan@mail.wvu.edu HEATHER CROSS Associate Director for Development 304.293.4156 | hecross@mail.wvu.edu

Making a Difference for Years to Come Below, you will find a list of the newest members to join the Irvin Stewart Society. These generous alumni and friends have included the Statler College in their estate plans. They are helping students of the future through gift provisions in their wills, life insurance or gifts of real estate with a retained life state. We are forever grateful to them. Please consider joining the Irvin Stewart Society by including our College in your estate plans. For more information please contact Shams Khan at 304.293.4036 or shams.khan@mail.wvu.edu. Robert D. Bewick, Jr. ’52 Garnet B. Browning Stanley C. Browning ’57, ’59 Roy H. Bucklew, Jr. ’53 Eleanor D. Campbell John W. Campbell ’64 Mark Campbell ’57 Frank Cerminara ’70 Susan Klatskin Cerminara ’69 Vudara Chuop ’80 Jane Yohe Cooley Wils L. Cooley III, PhD Rena Cyphert Irene V. Desmond Robert M. Desmond, PhD Irma McGinnis Dotson ’49, ’54 James M. Dotson ’48, ’49, ’54 Kathleen J. DuBois ’85 Alfred F. Galli ’44, ’47 Beatrice Galli Donald J. Gay ’57 Anita Haddad Walter Haddad ’58 Margaret M. Hall ’74, ’76, ’81 Walter J. Hansen ’70 John R. Hardesty, Jr. ’65 Mary Anne Hardesty Lawrence C. Hays ’41 Gregory L. Herrick ’70 Sheila G. Herrick ’74 Glen H. Hiner, PhD ’57, ’90 Betty J. Hurst* ’53 Elmo J. Hurst* ’53 Robert S. Jacobson, JD ’47, ’55

Emil Johnson ’63, ’72 Penny Christie Johnson ’64 Joan Kelvington Lee Kelvington ’56 Genevieve Koepfinger Joseph L. Koepfinger Anthony E. Licata, PE ’70 M. Dale Martin ’52 Alice Parsons May ’38 Allan S. May ’39 Mildred L. McFarland* ’39 James R. McQuay, Jr., ’77 Betty L. Miller ’47, ’57 Toni R. Morris ’82, ’89, ’99 Betty Ann Morton Earl F. Morton ’51 Margarette E. Offutt Jean H. Orders ’52 Robert O. Orders ’51 Alice S. Poindexter William N. Poundstone* ’49 Robert E. Pyle, PhD ’50, ’51, ’53 James B. Reese ’70, ’77 Lora Virginia Richards James A. Romano* ’35 Lana C. Rossy R. Jeff Rossy ’80 Jacqulyn L. Sample Paul E. Sample, PhD ’55, ’57 J. Ted Samsell, MD ’67, ’71 Melody Samsell Charles M. Schaeffer ’59 Shirley Crane Schaeffer ’57

Barrett L. Shrout ’61, ’62 Nancy S. Shrout Kathryn Ann Simms Patrick Simms ’66 William A. Simms ’64 James Milton Smith ’36 John E. Sneckenberger ’64, ’66, ’70 Mary (Scottie) Sneckenberger ’67 James R. Stockner ’50 Tommy L. Stuchell, JD ’87 John M. Summerfield ’49 Charles E. Swing ’38 W. David Teter ’59, ’64 Charles M. Vest, PhD ’63 Jo Ann Wadsworth ’51 Maurice Wadsworth ’51 Gary W. Wamsley ’65 Betty S. Watkins ’61 W. Richard Watkins ’64, ’65 Caroline Baker Watts ’54, ’65 Royce J. Watts ’54, ’61 Ronald A. Weaver ’78 Frank T. Wheby ’56 Erna F. Wilkin F. David Wilkin EdD, ’67, ’69 Donald W. Worlledge ’55 Mary E. Worlledge Eugene M. Zvolensky ’70 *Charter Members

ALUMNI: GET INVOLVED! CONNECT • MEMBERSHIP CAREERS • COMMUNITY Congratulations and welcome to your alumni family. The WVU Alumni Association is here to help strengthen your networks, enhance your experiences and allow you to stay connected and engaged in the life of your alma mater. If you are interested in joining our network, visit

www.alumni.wvu.edu/ membership

STAY CONNECTED ... GET INVOLVED ... and NETWORK!

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Irvin Stewart Society:

Alumni Academies ACADEMY OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERS

ACADEMY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS

Lisa A. Baker

John A. Buchheit

Current position: patent attorney, U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. Education: BS, chemical engineering, WVU; JD, WVU College of Law. Professional accomplishments: responsible for various aspects of intellectual property management and protection, including working with in-house research staff on patenting and licensing of inventions and negotiating research and development agreements with external partners ranging from lab scale to demonstration scale facilities; negotiated the intellectual property provisions of many large-scale demonstration projects under the DOE’s Clean Coal Technology program and Clean Coal Power Initiative, as well as more than $15 billion in projects awarded by NETL under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Current position: senior vice president, Gannett Fleming, Inc. Education: BS, civil engineering, WVU. Professional accomplishments: leads design and designbuild projects involving major and complex bridge structures; established Gannett Fleming’s formal risk management program; maintained the firm’s ISO-certified quality management system; furnished quantitative risk analysis for major transit infrastructure projects; active in the American Council of Engineering Companies, the Design Build Institute of America, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association; has authored papers on topics including bridge design, design-build and risk management.

Yadin David Current position: principal, Biomedical Engineering Consultants, LLC; adjunct academic appointment, University of Texas, School of Public Health; visiting professor, Tec de Monterrey school of Medicine (Mexico) and the PLA Medical Center (China). Education: BS, MS, electrical engineering, WVU; PhD, educational psychology, WVU. Professional accomplishments: has developed, directed and taught healthcare technology management programs focusing on risk mitigation of medical device systems and their networks; expertise covers health technology program leadership, forensic engineering and product development and regulatory compliance processes; has completed more than 200 investigations of medical device-related adverse events and implemented the first pediatric telemedicine-based medical services; developed and implemented distinguished medical devices’ strategy and compliance practice, based on clinical requirements, users’ competencies and regulatory guidelines; globally trains biomedical professionals in various technology management subjects including hospital disaster preparedness plans for resource-poor countries. Awards: honorary member, Italian Clinical Engineers Association; 2015 Houston Award (Medical Equipment and Supplies category); member, Academy of the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Distinguished Leadership Award, Medical Engineering Society of Chinese Medical Association; Lifetime Achievement Award, American College of Clinical Engineering; Robert L. Morris International Humanitarian Award, ACCE/ Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation.

FALL 2017

Darlene S. Schuster

Current position: executive director, Institute for Sustainability, an American Institute of Chemical Engineers technological community. Education: BS, chemical engineering, WVU; MS, chemical engineering, University of Pittsburgh; PhD, chemical engineering, WVU. Professional accomplishments: oversees the industry, membership and youth-focused entities formed to advance the science and state of sustainability and the creation of the AIChE Sustainability Index; staffs the new AIChE Center for Energy Initiatives; was the Clare Boothe Luce Chair of Chemical Engineering at Bucknell University; held various engineering positions with Gulf Oil Production Research and Chevron Oil Field Research Company. Awards: Science Policy Fellowship, American Chemical Society, where she worked to educate congressional staff and Congress on technical policy issues; 2004 Technical Achievement Award, Central Pennsylvania Engineers Council, for contributions to novel technology product development and commercialization by her company, DP Group.

Hota GangaRao Current positions: Maurice and JoAnn Wadsworth Distinguished Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, WVU; director, Constructed Facilities Center; director, Center for the Integration of Composites into Infrastructure. Education: BS, civil engineering, I.I.T. (India); MS PhD, civil engineering, North Carolina State University. Professional accomplishments: has worked to advance the use of state-ofthe-art of fiber reinforced polymer composite materials and their applications to infrastructure systems; field-implemented his research findings and technical innovations for construction and rehabilitation of a wide spectrum of engineering systems in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Alaska and other states; has utilized FRP composites for corrosion-resistant storage buildings and economical modular housing; involved with innovations of naval vessels, prefabricated pavements, utility poles, high-pressure gas pipes, sheet piling, natural fiber reinforced composites and others; has published more than 400 technical papers on a wide range of subjects in refereed journals and proceedings, in addition to textbooks and book chapters; has received a dozen patents and many national awards; has advised more than 300 graduate students.

Wayne D. Morgan Current position: vice president, Business Development and External Affairs, The Thrasher Group. Education: BS, civil engineering, WVU; MBA, University of Charleston. Professional accomplishments: oversees civil engineering projects for The Thrasher Group, West Virginia’s largest privately owned, multi-disciplinary firm and one of the leading firms in the Mid-Atlantic region; previously served as president of West Virginia American Water Company; held a number of positions with American Water Systems including vice president, Service Delivery Northeast Region, director, Operational Excellence for the Americas Region and vice president, operations.

Louis D. Rocchini Current position: Transportation Business Unit Director (ret.), Maguire Group. Education: BS, MS, civil engineering, WVU. Professional accomplishments: involved in the planning, design and construction of many Pittsburgh-area major transportation projects; held a number of positions with the Maguire Group, including project manager and vice president, profit center manager; served as a senior transportation engineer, Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission and as manager, Transportation Planning for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania; active in professional organizations including the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the American Society of Highway Engineers and the American Council of Engineering Companies, where he held numerous positions.

Powsiri “Klink” Klinkhachorn Current position: professor of computer science and electrical engineering, WVU. Education: BS, electrical engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology (Thailand); MS and PhD, electrical engineering, WVU. Professional accomplishments: has led several WVU robotics teams to top finishes in numerous national and international competitions, including the NASA Robotics Mining Competition, NASA/NIA RASC-AL Exploration Robo-Ops Competition and the Pacific International Space Exploration Systems Robotic Space Mining Competition; has also served as an advisor to the winning team in the Sample Return Robot Challenge, part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges; has been principal and/or co-principal investigator on more than 100 grants and contracts, totaling more than $30 million; has published more than 250 articles in journals, conference proceedings and technical reports; member of Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, Eta Kappa Nu and is a Fellow of IEEE. Awards: West Virginia Professor of the Year from the Carnegie Foundation/ CASE; the IEEE Major Education Innovation Award from the Educational Activities Board; the WVU Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching; the Statler College’s Teacher of the Year and Outstanding Researcher awards; a finalist in the INTEL 8086 Application Contest; and the Thailand National Science Fair Innovation Award.

J. Kevin Reid Current position: vice president of National Security and Chief Information Officer for KeyLogic. Previous position: assistant director of the IT Infrastructure Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Education: BS, electrical engineering, WVU; MBA, Marymount University; MS, software engineering, Central Michigan University. Professional accomplishments: a recognized industry leader in national security, providing solutions that involve cutting-edge biometrics, big data and cyber capabilities. Awards: FBI’s Assistant Director’s awards for Overall Excellence and Excellence in Management and Leadership, as well as numerous industry awards.

Ajay Waghray Current position: executive vice president and chief technology officer of Assurant, Inc. Education: BS, mechanical engineering, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (India); MS, computer science, WVU; MBA, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Professional accomplishments: served as chief information officer of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, which provides products and services to a global customer base that includes 98 percent of the Fortune 500; previously served as chief information officer for Verizon Wireless, where he was instrumental in the company’s 4G/LTE launch and the integration of the Alltel acquisition; started his wireless career with Bell Atlantic Mobile in 1997, which later became part of the then-newly formed Verizon Wireless. Awards: was named to InformationWeek 500, a list of U.S. technology innovators in 2011; won InfoWorld’s CTO 25 award and a CIO 100 award from CIO Magazine in 2010 was honored as one of ComputerWorld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders in 2009.

in memoriam Larry J. Argiro, Sr., 96, formerly of Fairmont, died Saturday, March 18, at his Severna Park, Maryland, home. Argiro, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from WVU in electrical engineering, served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He began his career in 1947 with the David Taylor Naval Ship Research and Development Center and progressed from entry-level engineer to become a member of the senior executive service and director of the Machinery Research and Development Directorate responsible for developing quiet advanced machinery systems. He was a pioneer in developing machinery acoustic silencing technology for reducing noise from shipboard machinery and controlling environmental and habitability noise on ships. He is survived by his wife of 69 years, Rose, and his son, Larry. William S. Britt passed away on April 22, in Salt Lake City, Utah. After graduating from WVU in 1954 with a degree in chemical engineering, he served in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear weapons officer before returning to Duquesne University to earn a degree in patent law. His love of the mountains brought him to Salt Lake City, where he partnered with Dave Trask to form Trask Britt Law. He leaves behind his wife, two daughters, two sons and a step-daughter. Britt was inducted into the Academy of Chemical Engineers in 2001. Aaron Anthony Haywood, 22, of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, died on June 26, at his home. A 2017 graduate of WVU with a degree in petroleum and natural gas engineering, Haywood enjoyed playing golf and loved music; he was a self-taught guitar and piano player. He is survived by his parents, Craig and Dawn Haywood; and his brother, Dalton, who serves with the U.S. Air Force in South Korea. Joseph John Larry, 90, died January 21, in Fairmont. A 1952 graduate of WVU with a degree in mining engineering, Larry worked for a number of mining operations including FNC Mining Machinery in Fairmont, where he served as chief sales officer. He traveled extensively in Poland, Russia, India and Germany to evaluate long-wall mining equipment and techniques. He was past chairman of the WVU School of Mines Alumni. He is survived by his two sons and several grandchildren. James H. Laughlin, Jr., 74, died in Arlington, Virginia, January 26, 2016. A native of Charleston, Laughlin graduated from WVU with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1964. He earned his law degree from American University in Washington, D.C. His specialty was in intellectual property law particularly in litigation. Laughlin was inducted into WVU’s Academy of Chemical Engineers in 2006. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor, three daughters and six grandchildren. Myron Paul “Cope” Nehrebecki, 64, of Washington, Pennsylvania, died on July 10. After graduating from WVU with a degree in mining engineering in 1976, Nehrebecki worked for R&P Coal Company, where his career spanned many years in multiple mines and offices. He competed as a member of the company’s mine rescue team and was a strong advocate of mine safety. He transitioned to Consol Energy when the company purchased R&P, and he retired from Consol in 2013 after 36 years. He is survived by his wife of 46 years, Laura; a daughter, Lynne; and three grandchildren. G. Michael Palmer, 74, of Morgantown, died on Saturday, April 29. A native of Wheeling, Palmer earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from WVU in nuclear physics in 1967 and 1971, respectively. After starting his teaching career at Bethany College, he returned to WVU’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, where he worked on a Department of Transportation mobile emissions project and developed software for the College and University’s Office of Admissions and Records. Palmer retired from WVU in 2003 at the rank of professor emeritus but remained active by teaching graduate-level courses and working on the annual Balloon Satellite Course. He is survived by his daughters, Michelle and Karen, and two grandchildren.

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